Zephyr To мороз: Wind and Frost
by AelysAlthea
Summary: Fifth year wasn't all about OWLs. With the explosive excitement of the Triwizard Tournament, the awe-inspiring invasion of the foreign students, and the upcoming Yule Ball, even for Ravenclaws study had become almost secondarily important. Yuuri was far from removed from such fascination. Even he couldn't deny that the foreign students interested him - and maybe one student...
1. Chapter 1 - A Cold

**Summary:** Fifth year wasn't all about OWLs. With the explosive excitement of the Triwizard Tournament, the awe-inspiring invasion of the foreign students, and the upcoming Yule Ball, even for Ravenclaws study had become almost secondarily important.

Yuuri was far from removed from such fascination. Even he couldn't deny that the foreign students interested him - and maybe one student just a little more than the others.

 **Rating:** T

 **Tags:** Yuuri Katsuki/Viktor Nikiforov, Harry Potter Crossover, Canon Era, Fifth Year, Crushes, Pining, Language Barrier, Misunderstanding, References to Past Bullying, Shyness, Dancing, Ice Skating

* * *

 **Zephyr To Mороz**

 **Chapter 1: A Cold**

The cold chased Yuuri as he stumbled through the heavy front doors of Hogwarts castle and into the Entrance Hall. Winter was rapidly encroaching, and the nipping teeth of frost and snow that had enveloped the grounds strained its utmost to cling to his shoulders, to tear at his scarf from his neck and wrap frozen fingers around his boots in a mournful attempt to keep him in its chilling embrace. Yuuri would almost have been inclined to let it –

But it was cold. Almost too cold, and despite his fondness for the frozen depths of winter, it was blessedly satisfying to be free of its grasp. Yuuri shivered into his overcoat, leaning heavily upon the closed double doors for a moment before straightening. Warmth had never been to his taste, but the mellow heat thrumming from the stonewalls, as though radiating from the torches illuminating the hall itself, was more than a little appreciated.

Except that, outside, the wind continued to howl. To some, perhaps it would have been a wail of frustration, an indignant demand for entry through the thick wooden doors of the castle. To Yuuri, however, it sounded nothing short of mournful.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled into his scarf, "but it's already way too dark for me to be outside any longer."

The wind raked insubstantial fingers down the door at his back. Pleading and demanding sounded very similar to the untrained ear.

"Maybe tomorrow," Yuuri said, half turning to glance towards the door as though seeing through it. "I'll come out again maybe tomorrow."

Some people thought he was strange. Many people, for that matter, and not only for the fact that he went outside and lost himself wandering the grounds in the depths of winter as though he didn't feel the cold. He did, of course, but any discomfort was of secondary importance when compared to the blissful feeling of the wind caressing his cheeks, the ice flooding his lungs with every breath, and the weightlessness that accompanied being buffeted by that very wind and nearly lifting him off his feet.

Many people thought Yuuri was strange – but at least their consideration was only for his wandering. He'd learnt long ago that 'talking to the wind' was far from considered an acceptable habit. Even if the wind did sometimes reply.

Sighing, Yuuri straightened from his slump and, scrubbing his gloved hands together, left the mournful wind and started towards the open doors of the Great Hall. The sounds of dinner and conversation, merrymaking and explosions of jovial arguments, echoed from within alongside the rich scent of spices and closely packed bodies.

It was late. Later than Yuuri had realised, even, distracted as he'd been. It was only when he'd opened his eyes after a particularly long bound of mindless, blind walking that he'd even realised night had fallen.

The Great Hall was thickly crowded when Yuuri stepped inside. All four tables were crammed with platters, groaning beneath heavy dishes that steamed in vaporous fumes as though they'd just been pulled from the oven. The benches were all but sagging beneath their diners, and the head table was dotted with most of the professors in watchful attendance.

Ducking his head, Yuuri slipped down the central aisle. No one seemed to notice him, which was a blessing. Not that anything untoward was likely to happen should he be noticed, but Yuuri had long ago learnt that, for people such as himself that were considered 'a little strange', it was better to avoid being noticed. Ravenclaw had its fair share of quirky housemates, but outside of Ravenclaw Tower and its common room, students were usually far less accepting of such strangeness.

Though Yuuri hadn't really been bullied in years, it was always best to prepare for the worst and avoid where possible.

Unfortunately for him, there were certain members of the student body who seemed to sense his presence as one would a magnet drawn to a lodestone. And like just such a magnet, such attention was upon him barely seconds after he'd entered the Great Hall.

"Yuuri! Where have you been? I didn't see you –"

Yuuko's words abruptly silenced as she crashed into him. Yuuri reeled and almost tumbled to the floor. Though a slight girl, Yuuko more than made up for her diminutive size with sheer enthusiasm. Mostly through her voice, for that matter; Yuuko had been born with an impressively dextrous tongue that was made no less impressive for the fact that her voice remained almost incessantly hushed.

Yuuri's breath was knocked out of him for the force of her collision. Why Yuuko felt the need to crush him in an embrace every time they were separated for more than a few hours at a time he would never understand, but he despite his stumble, he appreciated it. Friends – true friends that withstood distance, time, and the segregation of houses – were invaluable. Every piece of them.

Or almost every piece.

"Yuuko, I can't breathe," Yuuri managed, attempting to extricate himself from her graso. He nearly tripped into a boy at the Hufflepuff table beside him in his attempt and spared the younger student an apologetic smile that was all but ignored.

Yuuko ignored his protests too, seeming to squeeze him only tighter. "You're frozen, Yuuri," she said, reprimand sharpening her words.

"I'm fine," he replied.

"No, no, you're far too cold. Haven't you ever heard of a Warming Charm?"

Of course Yuuri had, but he'd never been partial to using them. It wasn't that he disliked being warm but the refreshing starkness of the cold was… Well, nothing really beat that.

Twisting so that he faced her instead of simply being the subject of her hug, Yuuri struggled to pry Yuuko off of him. "I'm fine. It's not _that_ cold."

Yuuko pursed her lips slightly, regarding him shrewdly. "You were outside, weren't you?"

"Is that even a question?"

Her lips pursed further. "It's practically a blizzard outside, Yuuri."

"It's not –"

"And it's night time."

"It wasn't when I first went –"

" _And_ you should have been studying. With _me_." Yuuko's pursed lips had descended into a full pout. "How am I supposed to pass my Charms OWLs if my tutor keeps abandoning me to freeze himself in the snow?"

Dropping his chin, Yuuri ceded to Yuuko's chiding despite the urge to smile that welled within him. Though she might complain, Yuuko was far from struggling with her Charms work. Yuuri wasn't so oblivious of his situation that he didn't know at least half of the reason for her committed company. It went beyond the mere fact that Yuuko was the kind of person that rained adoration upon her friends.

"You don't need to mother me, you know," Yuuri said. "I'm sure when _okaa-san_ asked us to keep an eye out for one another she didn't mean –"

"Oh, she meant it," Yuuko interrupted him again, finally releasing Yuuri from her hold. "She really, truly did. And since Mari doesn't seem to care that you're heading towards frostbite the way you're going, I've got to step up my game."

Yuuri allowed his smile to spread. Yuuko was exaggerating, and she likely knew it. Not only about the frostbite – something that had only _nearly_ happened the once and that Yuuri was more than aware enough to avoid these days – but about his mother's persistence. Yuuri's mother was about as mellow as they came; if anyone was accepting of Yuuri's quirks – or 'responsible' for them, as some tried to blame – it was her.

Leaving the truth lie, however, Yuuri only shrugged. He spared a glance around himself, if only to be sure that their exchange was passing relatively unnoticed, before replying. "Mari doesn't _not_ care. She just has her plate full."

Yuuko harrumphed. "Still."

"She's a prefect."

" _Still_."

"And not even of my own house, so –"

" _Still,_ Yuuri, that's no excuse. And besides," and Yuuko tipped her nose into the air, "if your _onee-san_ isn't going to tell you to stop acting like a fool and Minako's too busy to notice then someone has to."

Without another word, Yuuko grabbed Yuuri's hand spun on her heel. She had no qualms about proceeding to drag Yuuri along the Hufflepuff table, back the way he'd come, to skirt around the other side. Yuuri couldn't really protest; many though Yuuko was a subdued kind of person, rarely one to scold or demand, but those people likely didn't speak a lick of Japanese. It hadn't escaped Yuuri's notice that whenever Yuuko chided him, it was always in Japanese. It probably helped that they were two of only a handful of Japanese-speaking students in the entire school.

"You know, I should probably make an appearance at the Ravenclaw table _before_ sitting with you," Yuuri pointed out rationally.

"Don't be ridiculous," Yuuko said, abandoning English once more. Turning towards Yuuri, she herded him towards the narrow stretch of bench at the Hufflepuff table. "Everyone knows you sit with us as much as your own house."

"That's not a very good show of house loyalty," he muttered.

"On the contrary, I think it's a very good show," Yuuko said, flashing him a smile as her indignation visibly faded.

"To the wrong house, though."

"Or the right house."

"Yuuko, please let's not have this discussion again –"

"I will always believe that you should have been sorted into Hufflepuff, Yuuri," Yuuko said, raising her voice over his protests. "Always. I mean, _everyone_ in your family was a Hufflepuff, and it doesn't matter if you're wonderful at Charms, you should have been sorted with _us_ so…"

Yuuri bit back a sigh as Yuuko continued with her familiar tirade. Or what was a tirade to his ears and few others; with her quiet voice and deliberate abandonment of English, she likely seemed to be merely chatting amiably to him. Yuuko was deceptive like that.

Instead, Yuuri seated himself where he'd been directed. He spared a glance towards the hulk of a boy at his side before reaching for the nearest bowl of baked potatoes. "Hi, Takashi."

Takashi, Yuuko's boyfriend and once Yuuri-hater until he'd realised that Yuuri would never see Yuuko in a romantic light, smiled through a mouthful of his own dinner. "Hi, Yuuri," he said, his word barely intelligible. "You're late."

Yuuri shrugged. "Not on purpose. I just lost track of time."

Takashi made a firm effort to swallow his mouthful before continuing. "That's not really surprising for you."

"Not really."

"You should set an alarm or something on your wand. Like me. I always have an alarm for when dinner's set –"

"Are you both intentionally ignoring me?" Yuuko asked, wriggling into the non-existent space between Yuuri and Takashi.

"Of course not," Yuuri said at the same time Takashi grinned and admitted, "Maybe just a little bit."

Yuuko scowled, an expression that held about as much heat as the mellow warmth of Hufflepuff's Basement. Or so Yuuri had heard; he'd been bequeathed with more than his fair share of tales of the Basement throughout his childhood and then more rigorously in his teenage years when it was discovered that he would never set foot inside its walls. Apparently Hufflepuff had a rule for that.

"Traitors," Yuuko muttered. "The both of you."

For all of her disgruntlement, however, she subsided quickly enough. In bare moments, she was chattering at a rapid pace once more, past her scolding of Yuuri and Takashi both for different reasons and onto more practical matters.

Yuuri picked at his dinner as he listened. He didn't bother sparing a glance for the rest of the Hufflepuff table. None of them would care that he, in his blue and bronze tie and Ravenclaw status, was like a black sheep amongst the their white. Any horror for his presence had long ago faded alongside the rest of the bullying for his 'strange ways'. It helped that his older sister Mari was a prefect of Hufflepuff; whether for fear or respect, most of the House seemed to consider it more to their benefit to simply allow Yuuri amongst them on frequent occasion.

The Great Hall was a sea of noise and warmth, of good-humour, curiosity, and the world-weariness of students at the end of their day facing the prospect of further tutelage the following morning. The school year itself was more than on its way to winding down, standing on verge of the holidays, even, and the flavour of Christmas was drifting into the air. Already, evidence of the expected décor was gradually assembling itself throughout the Great Hall and beyond. It was always a gradual process, Yuuri had discovered over his five years in attendance. Gradual, yet somehow sudden, too, for the appearance of wreaths and snow would be absent one day and then in excess the next.

Glancing around the room, Yuuri noticed that, since lunchtime, another Christmas tree had been added to the Great Hall, making three in total. There would be more, he knew, just as he knew the number of Christmas pixies flitting around them, the density of artfully shaped snowflakes falling from the sky, the twinkle of fairy lights and the boxes – some as big as small beds – placed haphazardly throughout the hall would similarly increase. And that was to say nothing of the icicles that seemed to grow like living entities from every balustrade throughout the castle.

They weren't cold, those icicles, but Yuuri liked the effect. Anything that reminded him of winter was favourable in his opinion.

He'd oftentimes wondered if the degree of decoration continued to mount up until Christmas Day itself. Like many of the students of Hogwarts, Yuuri had never stayed over the break before, always returning home for the holiday and so never witnessing it for himself. That was one thing, he supposed; one benefit to that year that he hadn't undertaken before. Yuuri wasn't entirely decided as to whether he would be remaining at Hogwarts for the Christmas holiday as many of the students had abruptly decided to, but…

"Sprout has organised another dance lesson for everyone, did you know?" Yuuko said, breaking into his thoughts.

A glance towards her found that she was looking to him as much as to Takashi. Yuuri blinked at her for a moment before dropping his attention to his plate. He chased a pea for a moment, feeling Yuuko's expectant regard; she'd likely given up on Takashi agreeing to accompany her to dance lessons after the first dozen times.

"O…kay," Yuuri said slowly.

"Okay?" Yuuko mimicked just as slowly. "So you'll come with me?"

"Ravenclaw has their own practice lessons, Yuuko. I think I'm supposed to attend those ones."

Yuuko flapped a hand at him. "You don't need to go to them. You can already dance."

"Then why would I need to come to yours?"

"For my sake, of course."

Yuuri regarded her sidelong. "You can dance too, though. I'm not so forgetful that I can't remember who took dancing lessons with me as a kid."

Yuuko grinned. "Precisely. So you can come and help out everyone else who needs to practice their dancing."

"Yuuko's taken to teaching everyone else who wants to learn," Takashi said, leaning around her to offer Yuuri an indulgent smile. That indulgence was all for Yuuko, Yuuri had no doubt. "She's a natural-born teacher."

"I'm not _that_ good," Yuuko said, though her delight for the compliment was more than apparent in her own widely spreading smile.

"You really are," Takashi said, leaning into her to plant a kiss on her cheek. "Everyone thinks so."

"Not everyone, surely."

"Just about everyone. It's no secret that Sprout's organised the lessons around your schedule."

Yuuko giggled before proceeding to describe to Takashi just what she had planned for the upcoming lesson. For the moment, at least, Yuuri was safe from her demands.

He propped an elbow on the table, idly chasing another pea around his plate with less interest than he watched the Great Hall around him. Some of the professors were departing, and a horde of first years seemed to have chosen that moment to rise from the Gryffindor table and take their leave. But the hall itself was still packed, and far more packed than it usually was at such an hour. The reason for that lay in the peppering of foreign students at the Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables.

The Beauxbatons students.

The Durmstrang students.

The light blue of the Beauxbatons silken uniforms, even shrouded in heavy cloaks to stave of the chill that they reputedly felt for the 'horrible difference in temperature to the Pyrenees' that was their Academy's locale, stood out like glowing swans amidst ducklings. Yuuri hadn't had much to do with the Beauxbatons students, despite the fact that they seemed to have taken to the Ravenclaws well enough. He'd never spent all that much time at the Ravenclaw table, anyway.

As similarly prominent – or even more so – were the Durmstrang students far across the hall at the Slytherin table. They stood out vibrantly in their blood-red robes, not muffled in the slightest by the woolly capes that they'd worn so dashingly upon arrival at Hogwarts weeks before. In contrast to the Beauxbatons students, those of Durmstrang seemed to find the Scottish winter almost mild by comparison to their own climes.

Yuuri had even less to do with them. He could only admire from afar – which he happened to spent quite a bit of time doing.

Since the announcement of the Triwizard Tournament, Hogwarts had been tipped on its head, and that was even before the other two schools had arrived on the grounds. Yuuri had been excited, because who wouldn't be for something so new and wondrous? But that excitement had faded almost immediately with both his discovery that, as a fifth year, he would be unable to participate, but that the Tournament itself was far from as heroically exciting as the stories and pining words of his fellow students believed it to be.

If anything, Yuuri thought it all sounded a little scary. Scary, but more than that, irrelevant. What was the point of participating in such a tournament and risking life and limb? For the fortune? For the fame? Yuuri's family wasn't particularly wealthy, but they were far from destitute. What need did he have of fortune? And fame was hardly something he considered appealing; limelight had never been an objective of his. To do his best, certainly, and to be recognised for excellent performance even more so, but fame? _Heroic_ fame?

Yuuri wasn't a hero, and he certainly wasn't brave. Unlike the rest of his fellow fifth year Ravenclaws, he hadn't spent nights sighing aloud in the dormitory about how wonderful it would have been to participate in the tournament. When the champions were selected – and selected in a somewhat unorthodox and unexpected manner at that – there was little any other student could do by way of involvement.

Yuuri almost felt sorry for Cedric Diggory being selected. For Harry Potter, too, even if most of the school still thought he was something of a cheating bastard who'd somehow slithered his way into the competition. Yuuri didn't really care. He'd never had all that much to do with Harry Potter, nor any other underclassman for that matter.

But that holiday… For the first time in weeks, the tournament and its proceedings was taking a turn for the holistic involvement of school and students. Yuuri still wasn't sure how he felt about that, even if the majority of his classmates – Yuuko included – seemed to think the Yule Ball was utterly wonderful.

"… that many don't know their left from their right foot, but we can fix that. Right, Yuuri?"

Yuuri dragged his gaze from listless staring at the Slytherin table towards Yuuko once more. "Hm?"

She'd shunted her plate aside and propped her elbows on the table, chin dropping into her raised hands. She blinked at him with wide, guileless eyes, and Yuuri knew immediately what would follow. Just as he knew that there was no way he would really be able to deny her anything.

"Please," Yuuko asked, and though there was a slight whine to her words, her hopefulness and plea was genuine. Yuuko might be persistent at times, but her heart was always in the right place. She was a kind person beneath all of her candour. "I could really use your help with the lessons. I can't give demonstrations nearly so well without an actual dancing partner, and Takashi won't do."

"Hey," Takashi objected, though without any heat. He wasn't an appalling dancer, but he had neither the skill nor the inclination to pursue it with any sincerity. For Yuuko, he might bend his neck, but it would be reluctantly.

"Please?" Yuuko repeated, not even sparing Takashi a glance. "Sprout would be ever-so grateful."

Yuuri bit his lip. He would be blatantly lying if he said he didn't enjoy dancing, even when his formal lessons had been finished for the year, but… "Are you sure Sprout even wants me there?" he asked.

Yuuko abruptly beamed. She must have known at that moment that she'd already won. "Of course!"

"And the other Hufflepuffs?"

"You're practically a Hufflepuff, Yuuri."

Yuuri gnawed at his lip, gaze dropping to his plate. "Except for the fact that I'm not. Ravenclaw might think I'm traitorous for teaching Hufflepuffs instead of them."

"It's not really a competition, is it?" Takashi asked distractedly. He seemed far more interested in ladling up a clean bowl with steaming pudding.

"It's not at all!" Yuuko said. She sounded horrified for the thought. "Why, maybe we could even have a group of students from all houses come along, do you think?"

"All houses?" Yuuri asked. He frowned. "That could be messy."

"There's nothing wrong with –"

"Having Gryffindors and Slytherins in the same room might be a little difficult," he pointed out.

Yuuko stuttered to a momentary stop, and then she was frowning too. Only for it to clear a moment later. "Alright, then. How about just Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws? That would make your housemates happy, don't you think, Yuuri?"

"Just Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws?" Yuuri echoed.

The hint of a smile touched Yuuko's lips. "And a certain Gryffindor, if you must."

"Phichit wouldn't ever forgive me if I didn't ask him along," Yuuri said, nodding solemnly.

"Why, I'll never know," Yuuko said with a shake of her head. "He's perfectly adept at dancing himself."

"Maybe that's why?" Yuuri suggested. "He'd likely take it as an insult that we didn't ask him to join us."

Yuuko giggled. "Probably."

Dinner finished with Yuuko's rapid departure, hastening to the head table before she'd even half finished her own pudding. She appeared intent upon waylaying Sprout, and Sprout seemed only too accepting of that fact.

Far too accepting, for that. Professor Sprout was the ultimate Hufflepuff.

"Well, I should probably go with her," Takashi said, scooping a final bite of pudding into his mouth before rising. He wasn't alone; several other Hufflepuffs were similarly finishing their meals, though evidently making for the doors rather than an overly enthusiastic girlfriend. "Thanks for this, Yuuri."

"Why are you thanking me?" Yuuri asked, rising alongside him. "It's Yuuko I'm helping."

Takashi shrugged. "Yuuko being happy makes me happy," he said simply, and to Takashi, it likely was that simple. He doted upon Yuuko as few other people Yuuri knew seemed capable of doing for their partners.

Yuuri spared him a parting wave, a 'regretful' decline at his offer to accompany him to the head table, before starting from the Great Hall as well. He shrugged off his scarf as he did so, pausing outside the door to tuck it inside his pocket alongside his gloves. The mellow warmth of the room was too stifling for indoors.

It was because of his momentary pause that Yuuri found himself attacked by a wayward Gryffindor.

The weight of a colliding body crashing into his back nearly took him from his feet. Why such collisions seemed to happen to him so often was a mystery; first Yuuko and now this? Not that Yuuri begrudged it, but he was sorely questioning his balancing skills in that he'd nearly fallen on his face twice in the space of barely an hour.

"Yuuri!" was all but bellowed into his ear. "What was Yuuko talking to Sprout about? She looked very excited. Is it exciting? Do you know? Can you tell me?"

Straightening as the weight lifted from his shoulders – though it was immediately replaced by an arm slung loosely around them instead – Yuuri turned with a smile towards his second closest friend. "I'm sure she'd be more than happy to regale you with what's going on if you asked her, Phichit."

Phichit grinned. He was a vibrant person, always happy, always smiling, and despite the darkness of his eyes they always seemed to glow brightly with good humour. That humour was infectious; it was one of the reasons Yuuri had been so drawn to him in the first place. Few enough people at their dancing school were quite so enthusiastic as Yuuko, Phichit, and Yuuri himself in the first days of their childhood exploration. That they three had been sorted into three different houses had done little to distance them or dwindle their friendship – especially when summer resurfaced and found them at the studio once more.

A cluster of Gryffindors had paused a handful of steps from where Yuuri and Phichit stood and, when Yuuri tipped his head to them in acknowledgement, Phichit spared a moment to bid them farewell. "I'll follow you up in a bit," he said, and his Gryffindor friends shrugged and nodded their understanding. For whatever reason, despite interhouse competitiveness, Yuuri and his friends had never been cause of disapproval.

Phichit turned to Yuuri a moment later. "So, are you going to tell me?"

"About Yuuko?" Yuuri asked, glancing sidelong as a trio of Durmstrang students spilled from the Great Hall. He followed their passage as they crossed the Entrance Hall to the exiting double doors and, in a blast of chilling air, disappeared outside. It was a testament to just how hardy the Scandinavian students were that none of the three so much as flinched as the abusive blast.

"Oh, I'm assuming she was talking to her about dancing lessons or something," Phichit said, and as Yuuri glanced back towards him in surprise, his grin widened. "She's been on cloud nine about the Yule Ball since it was announced, hasn't she?"

Yuuri felt his own smile widen. It was true, after all. "Sprout's asked her to help with some of the lessons."

"Sprout asked her, or she asked Sprout?"

"Probably a bit of both."

Phichit laughed. It was a belly laugh, his whole body shaking with it. "Typical Yuuko," he said. "But that wasn't what I was talking about, actually."

Yuuri raised an eyebrow to him questioningly. "What are you talking about, then?"

Phichit paused before replying, edging them further from the doors into the Great Hall. Apparently, some unspoken call for departure had been sounded, for first exited a bundle of Ravenclaws, then Slytherins, then a lone Hufflepuff and another Ravenclaw. Phichit continued when the sounds of the Ravenclaws overloud debating had faded. "I mean, you were out really late tonight."

Yuuri frowned. He was certainly wearing the reprimands that night. "It wasn't that late."

"It was after dark."

"Dark happens earlier at the moment. That's not saying all that much."

"Still, it was definitely later than usual." Phichit raised his eyebrows pointedly. "Did you lose yourself to the snow again?"

Yuuri shrugged, if a little self-deprecatingly. Phichit was one of the few people who truly knew why he loved his winter wandering. Or part of the reason, anyway. Even so, it was just a little embarrassing to be faced with the fond exasperation of his friends.

"Maybe just a little," he muttered.

Phichit chuckled. "Typical."

"Hey."

'"I'm not saying it's a bad thing – unless you get your fingers frozen off, that is. Although," he paused, raising the hand not still looped around Yuuri's neck to his own chin, "it could be a sight to see you trying to hold your wand."

"You're a sadist," Yuuri said, and Phichit laughed. Yuuri joined him a moment later. They both knew his words to be the absolute opposite of reality. Few people were as genuinely and consistently bright and kind as Phichit was.

"I only do what I'm told, actually," Phichit continued a moment later. "Yuuko asked me –"

"She didn't," Yuuri said with a sigh.

Phichit's grin spread widely once more. "She did. Honestly, I sometimes think she considers herself more your big sister than Mari is."

Yuuri nodded resignedly. He knew the truth of that only too well. "You don't have to keep an eye out for me, you know. I'm more than capable of taking care of myself."

"Except for that one time –"

"We don't need to bring up that 'one time'," Yuuri hastened to override him. Phichit laughed again, but blessedly didn't continue. Certain stories of accidental wanderings and near abductions were better left unsaid, in Yuuri's opinion. "Really, it's fine. I just lost track of time."

Phichit jostled him slightly in his one-armed hug. "Off with the fairies?"

"Merlin, no," Yuuri said with a shudder that wasn't entirely feigned. "I'm never going to accidentally do _that_ again."

"How are the winter winds doing, then? Any new gossip they can give me?"

Yuuri plucked idly at Phichit's fingers where they hung over his shoulder. "There's no need to make fun of me, you know."

"I'm not making fun of you," Phichit said. "I never do."

"Except for that one time –"

"That was once!" Phichit interrupted. This time, when he jostled Yuuri, it was to drag him into a squeezing one-armed embrace more tightly. "I said I wouldn't tease you again after that first time, didn't I?"

"Phichit –"

"Didn't I?"

"You don't have to –"

" _Didn't I?"_

Sighing – or struggling to sigh through Phichit's excessive embrace – Yuuri nodded. It was true that most of the bullying had faded into obscurity in the past few years, but 'teasing' was still something of a sensitive topic. Especially in Ravenclaw; genuine scepticism was often masked by such 'teasing'.

But not from Phichit. Or Yuuko. Or Takashi, or the few other people at Hogwarts that Yuuri truly felt comfortable in the company of. The touch of warmth – not a discomforting warmth but something pure and wonderful that welled within him – was more than enough to stave off any melancholy for that modified bullying. Phichit wouldn't tease him. Not really. Not since he'd discovered that Yuuri's conversations with the wind was less imaginary and more simply magical.

"Yeah, I know," Yuuri said quietly, and Phichit finally stopped his demanding jostles.

"Don't you forget it," he said just as quietly.

"I won't."

"Ever _._ "

"Yeah, yeah."

Phichit nodded and finally dropped his arm from Yuuri's shoulders. "Okay. Well, now that's sorted – are you heading up to Ravenclaw Tower?"

Yuuri caught his lip between his teeth and hummed neutrally. Then he shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I'll probably just go down to the library to do our Potions homework."

"Do you want some company?"

Raising an eyebrow, Yuuri fought the urge to smirk. "You actually want to do homework?"

Phichit poked his shoulder. "Hey, I'm not a slacker. I just –"

"Really don't like Potions?" Yuuri supplied.

Phichit grunted. "Well, you can't really blame me. No Gryffindor really does. Snape doesn't like any of us."

Yuuri nodded sympathetically. How anyone could dislike someone like Phichit was a mystery to him, but it was common knowledge that Snape disliked Gryffindors. _All_ Gryffindors, with no exception. It was an injustice seen and acknowledged yet for whatever reason overlooked by the staff body.

"Do you need some help?" Yuuri offered.

"You're not that great at Potions," Phichit said with a regretful sigh.

"I know, but neither are you."

"So two half-decent brains –"

"- should make for a whole one?" Yuuri finished. They shared a smile. "That could work. But weren't you going back up to Gryffindor Tower with your friends?"

Phichit shrugged as, turning towards the eastern corridor, he started for the library. Yuuri followed after him, hitching his all-but-forgotten book bag more comfortably onto his shoulder. "They won't mind. Especially if they can copy my Potions homework."

"They probably shouldn't copy you," Yuuri said slowly. "That's not going to help them in our OWLs."

"Yuuri," Phichit said, glancing towards him with his eyebrows rising pointedly once more. "Just because Ravenclaws put unnecessary emphasis upon completing homework independently –"

"That's only for fifth years and up," Yuuri said.

"- doesn't mean that every other house has to," Phichit continued over him without slowing. "And besides, what're the odds that an in-depth study of the properties of Wandering Shrub roots is going to be in our exams?"

"They could be…"

Phichit laughed. Not in a teasing manner – for he likely meant and intended to stand by his prior words – but with true amusement. Such was Phichit's way. "You're hilarious."

"Thank you," Yuuri said with a slight roll of his eyes. "And you'll thank _me_ if you're prepared for when the time comes."

"Undoubtedly," Phichit said with a sharp nod and utter sincerity. "But it's nearly the holidays, and there's Christmas and the Yule Ball coming up, so in my opinion, it can take a back seat for a while."

Taking a turn and beginning the climb towards the third floor and library beyond, Yuuri clicked his tongue in exasperation for his forgetfulness. "I meant to ask you, by the way. From Yuuko."

"About the dancing lessons?" Phichit asked, glancing over his shoulder.

Yuuri nodded. "She asked if you wanted to come. It'll just be Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, I think. And you, if you wanted to."

"So I'll be the lone lion in the bit of badgers and crows?" Phichit asked, turning to trot backwards up the stairs. He nodded to a portrait as they shook their head at him and muttered something about 'silliness that'll have him tripping over his own feet'. Phichit either didn't hear the words or didn't care that they were spoken at all.

"Ravens, actually," Yuuri corrected. "And yes, if you want to. But only if you want to."

"And have the chance to take some embarrassing pictures of people tripping over their own feet?" Phichit grinned widely. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

How he managed to admit his inclination towards such things without seeming entirely cruel, Yuuri doubted he would ever understand. Phichit was glued to his camera most of the time, and it was a surprise that he didn't have his polaroid in hand even at that moment – though Yuuri would be stunned if it wasn't even then tucked in his bag. Phichit even helped his Gryffindor underclassman – Creevey, Yuuri thought his name was – though while Phichit snapped and crafted works of photographic art, Creevey seemed instead simply intent upon capturing in photograph every passing minute he happened across. Much of those with Harry Potter in them too, if gossip was to be believed. In general, Yuuri did believe it when it came from Phichit.

"You'll be helping with the teaching, though," Yuuri said. "If you come, you have to at least help a little bit."

"Is that desperation I hear in your voice?" Phichit said, flashing his toothy grin.

Yuuri pulled a face. "I'm not a good teacher."

"So?"

"Everyone knows that."

"And?"

"Even Yuuko knows that."

Phichit paused at the top of the stairwell to allow Yuuri to draw alongside him. "Yeah, but you can dance. That's the most important part. Besides, it's exciting, isn't it? Gets your blood pumped for the Yule Ball?"

Yuuri shrugged nonchalantly. The Yule Ball… while exciting in its novelty and the possibility of actually dancing outside of the half-hearted attempts at cohesive club events throughout the school year, the ball itself wasn't all that enticing. Especially not if…

"Have you asked anyone yet?" Yuuri asked.

Phichit drew his gaze sidelong thoughtfully. "No. Or at least not yet. I was thinking of asking one of the Beauxbatons girls who seemed keen enough when I spoke to her yesterday – Madamoiselle Crisp-something-or-other, I think her name was – but I haven't really had the chance to, yet. You?"

Yuuri dropped his gaze to his shoes as they approached the double doors of the library. They weren't quite the distraction from upon Phichit's question, but it was better than thinking on it too deeply. "I don't really know why everyone's so excited about this Ball," he muttered.

Phichit hummed with a curious lilt. "Yuuri? Is there someone you're going to ask?"

Yuuri chewed on his lip. It was that or risk blurting out all of his worries and longings. His _fears_ , even. That he did want to ask someone in particular, but that the someone he desperately wished to would definitely turn him down, so there was no way he could possibly attempt it.

He shook his head. "No. I'm not asking anyone."

Phichit was silent for a moment, and Yuuri wondered what expression he wore; he couldn't bring himself to glance towards his friend to discern it. When Phichit spoke, it was in a quiet, contemplative tone. "Well, that's a shame. I'm sure there'd be a whole heap of people who'd go with you if you gave them the chance."

Yuuri wasn't so sure about that, but he didn't object. He didn't need Phichit's pity. Instead, he simply followed as Phichit led the way into the cavernous library, sweet-talking Madam Pince as they passed her desk, and filed between towering columns of shelving riddled with as much dust as heavy tomes and parchment scrolls.

How could Yuuri admit that there was someone he wanted to ask? That the reason he spent his nights outside increasingly late in the past weeks wasn't solely because of his conversations with the wind? That it was a sight other than solely winter that had him peering around the forest edge and skirting the Black late long hours into the night?

Yuuri didn't say anything, even if he was under no allusions that his fascination with the Durmstrang students went far from unnoticed. Yuuri had an incessant crush – and he had no idea what to do about it.

* * *

A/N: What did you think of the first chapter? Please let me know with a review! I'm pathetically desperate for validation, so any word or two is so massively appreciated. Thank you for reading!


	2. Chapter 2 - A Charmer

**Chapter 2: A Charmer**

Yuuri would never forget the first time he saw Nikiforov.

Likely no Hogwarts student would forget that night, but Yuuri could remember it in detail. He remembered the waiting, how the night had been crisply cool but not cold, and the darkness of evening drifting towards black. The excitement of the moment, the discovery of the Triwizard Tournament and who it would bring to their grounds, thrummed through the waiting student body with renewing vigour. Even Yuuri, who had firmly decided that, even if he'd been able to, he wouldn't have chosen to participate in the Tournament, felt an almost longing for some sort of participation.

It was strange, but undeniable. He was sure he wasn't the only one to feel it, either.

The excitement – or apprehension – was apparent in the staff as much as the students. Professors strode throughout their midst, flicking slouching shoulders and ordering crooked ties to be fixed or robes to be brushed of invisible specs of dust. It was all about presentation for the greeting of the far-flung schools. All about first impressions. Yuuri had seen evidence of that around the castle as well; everything had been cleaned – _everything,_ even what he hadn't noticed needed cleaning – and silk banners for each of the Hogwarts Houses had been strung that evening in the Great Hall.

Classes had ended early that day, and Yuuri couldn't find complaint for it. The crazed gathering in the Entrance Hall in preparation for a dusk arrival couldn't have been so efficiently undertaken if the brief period after classes had properly ceased at the usual hour. Yuuri and every single one of his fellow students were lined up outside the castle's front doors, ordered in their year groups, and then the agitated pacing had began.

Pacing. Just pacing, as though by striding – or trotting, in Flitwick's case for the shortness of his legs – would help to improve their first impression. It didn't any more than the commands of the teachers would really make all that much of a difference.

"Stand up straight, silly girl," Yuuri heard Snape hiss from across the span of the courtyard.

"Take that ridiculous flower out of your hair, Patil," McGonagall barked.

Flitwick grumbled something to a Ravenclaw pair of boys who had glanced at one another and, foolishly, opened their mouths as though to speak. "Quite, if you would, boys. Just for a time – it's not too hard."

Even Sprout appeared in something of a tither with her house. She was bouncing between them, a frown crinkled her face as it rarely did, and whispering what appeared to be almost actual reprimands into abashed ears.

Yuuri didn't speak to the students around him, and not only because he'd never been particularly close to any of them. It wasn't too much to ask to remain silent for a time, and he, as many students had taken to doing, was thoroughly absorbed in scanning the grounds for any sign of the arriving schools. He barely spared a glance for his underclassman, Minami Kenjirou, who was muttering something directly behind him. It was likely words intended for Yuuri himself, for Kenjirou often felt the need to talk to him at every available moment for reasons Yuuri couldn't quite understand, but Yuuri didn't think himself cruel in ignoring him. Not at that moment, anyway.

Especially not when the schools arrived.

A giant of a chariot, glorious in the dusky gloom of evening, fell from the sky in the wake of equally glorious winged horses the size of elephants. Gasps sounded, reverberating through the courtyard, and Yuuri felt his mouth flop open.

Then, moments later, a violent splash and the distant Black Lake erupted to birth a derelict behemoth of a ship, as glorious in its ominous ghostliness as the flying carriage was pristine and refined.

More gasps. More wonder. But such wonder held nothing upon what arose when the students themselves arrived.

Hogwarts strove to present an amiable, welcoming, yet also respectable front, and Yuuri knew on some detached level that they managed just that. Yet there was little thought spared for decorum or appearances when the Beauxbatons students arrived. A flood of young men and women in blue silks and heavy coats – far too heavy for the autumnal weather, though they shivered despite their dress – they flowed down from the carriage like fluttering birds and hastened across the grounds.

There was a moment. A murmured exchange. A bustle and grumble of students stomping in place as though to warm themselves. Then they all but disappeared inside the school as though drawn by magic, their impressively gigantically tall Headmistress leading them with a long-legged stride. Yuuri stared after them as every other student did, his eyes glued to the backs of prim berets and hastening feet.

Not for long, however. It was impossible to look for long when the second school stepped onto the courtyard.

Durmstrang was different. The complete opposite to Beauxbatons, in fact. That difference lay in the slowness of their step, they almost casual strut across the pale pavers of the courtyard, that made them that much more engrossing to witness.

Yuuri stared. He knew he stared, and he wasn't the only one. Each and every Durmstrang student, and their headmaster to boot, was impressive in a way that the scuttling and glaring Beauxbatons students, trembling against the cold, simply weren't. Chins raised, shoulders straight, they strode forth as though they owned the very ground they walked upon. Yuuri half believed they did. Garbed in rich red robes, many carried woollen coats tucked under their arms and seemed nothing if not comfortable in the chilled evening that had chased the Beauxbatons students. Impressive, boys and girls both, and that was to say nothing of –

"Krum? Is that Viktor Krum?"

"Merlin, I think it is!"

"I didn't even know…"

"Did you know he was still in school?"

Whispers welled around Yuuri, and for a moment he was distracted. Then, at a nudge and point from Kenjirou at his side – he was eerily attentive to Yuuri at times – he saw Krum.

More than that, though, he really _saw_ everyone else.

Krum wasn't impressive. Or, rather, it was impressive that he was so unremarkable. Yuuri hadn't much interest in quidditch, but he had an appreciation for skill in any manner. Krum undoubtedly had that and yet, in person, he was… less larger than life. A thin young man, sallow skinned and dark-eyed, he walked alongside the headmaster with shoulders hunched and head slightly bowed in a way that seemed downright grumpy.

It might be impressive to see a star, perhaps, and Yuuri could acknowledge that the ensuing whispers, shuffling, and bumping of shoulders around him was warranted. But it was nothing quite so impressive as others.

A laugh split through the air. The sound was unexpected, almost strange in the face of Durmstrang's the immediate impression, and as such, Yuuri felt his gaze drawn. Drawn and held, for that matter; he couldn't look away from the Durmstrang student who seemed to be the only one even close to smiling.

He was tall. Older than Yuuri, it would seem, and strangely graceful, too. That grace was was evident when, in the midst of speaking to a girl at his side, he raised an arm in a flourish that would have better fit a dancing studio. And his _smile_. He was… he had…

"He's got silver hair."

Yuuri didn't realise he'd spoken until he heard his own words. When he did, it was with embarrassed and blessed relief to realise those words were spoken in barely a whisper. He felt his cheeks warm and, glancing around himself briefly, released a breath of relief that his clssmates seemed more intent upon staring at the Durmstrangs and marvelling over Krum, or peering over their shoulders towards the disappeared Beauxbatons students.

At least until Kenjirou spoke.

"Who, him?" Shuffling less more to Yuuri's side, Kenjirou rose on his toes to peer over the shoulders of those before him. Yuuri saw him purse his lips, a curious frown crinkled his brow. "The tall one? With the grey hair?"

Yuuri bit back the urge to jump upon Kenjirou's words. The 'tall one' didn't have 'grey hair', though if he did it would hardly have been a problem. But silver. It was definitely _silver_. The fact that it was Kenjirou who'd spoken the words, however – blunt, almost tactless, yet eternally vibrant Kenjirou with his magically bicoloured hair – meant it was hardly a criticism. Kenjirou didn't have much of a filter.

The Durmstrangs paused before Dumbledore as their own headmaster greeted him. It was a brief exchange, a further mutter of voices, before the visiting students were following Beauxbatons' lead into the Entrance Hall and beyond. Yuuri picked up his feet as the rest of Hogwarts' students hastened after them, and it was with more than a little regret to find the Durmstrang students had been ensnared almost immediately by the Slytherins and drawn to their table. Not that the Beauxbatons, apparently deeming the Ravenclaw table to be the most suited to their needs, weren't more than exciting in their reserved and entirely exotic manner, but…

That was the night Yuuri began watching the Slytherin table a little more than was perhaps warranted. He didn't truly meet the as-of-yet unnamed Nikiforov for nearly two weeks, however – if their 'meeting' could be deemed anything quite so definite, that was.

Yuuri had always been one to wander the school grounds. More often alone than with company, he found a certain kind of release in allowing himself to be drawn by the cool winds that skittered around the school. Hogwarts was always wreathed in wind, a happy coincidence that Yuuri had discovered in his first year. Those winds always appreciated a listening ear, and grew only more affectionate when Yuuri took the time to reply to their wayward words.

People thought he was strange – or at least stranger than many of the 'quirky' Ravenclaws, and that was saying something. But, much as Yuuri's own family, his parents, and sister had grown towards, they eventually seemed to accept it. There was still teasing of a sort, still the backhanded mockery of, "Hey, Katsuki! What's new on the weather-watch, wind-whisperer?" but it was more tokenistic than true mockery. Yuuri had almost grown to accept, to daresay even like, the nickname of wind-whisperer. He'd never quite had a word to describe his somewhat unique brand of Charm magic.

It was in one such walk, of an evening and drifting towards night, when Yuuri bumped into Nikiforov. Or, more correctly, when Nikiforov bumped into him, because Yuuri had long ago realised that, for whatever reason, when people approached him they were more than likely to crash into contact rather than slide to a halt. Yuuko and Phichit were testimony to that fact.

The Black Lake had become a source of interest over the past weeks. First, it had been simply one more novelty and excitement in the throughs of the upcoming Triwizard Tournament; everyone wanted to take a look at the potential Durmstrang champion and learn more of the people their own champion would be competing against.

That was until the choosing, that was. Until the expansive and catastrophic debacle that was Harry Potter being somehow chosen as a fourth champion alongside Hufflepuff's Cedric Diggory. Yuuri felt sorry for Potter; even if he really was responsible for getting chosen as most of the school believed of him, he clearly hadn't understood what he was getting himself into. Theos champions – they could die in the Tournament.

Yuuri didn't want to compete. Even were he old enough he didn't think he'd want to compete.

In the weeks since, those leading up to the first task in which normality vaguely reinstated itself, the thrill of the Tournament had… not died, precisely, but mellowed. Interest in the students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had taken on a more clinically curious air, or it had in Ravenclaw House. Yuuri had been drawn into more discussions with housemates who rarely spoke to him at all pertaining to the differences between schools and pondering just what impact variable education systems would have upon the Wizarding world than he could count.

"I hear music coming from the Beauxbatons carriage far too often and cohesively for it to be simply for leisure," Minako, sixth year prefect and one of the few Ravenclaws who spared Yuuri more than a passing moment, said to him of a night. She was seated at one of the common room tables and managing to write an expansive essay in her usual fluid script even as she pondered aloud. "Do you think perhaps creative arts is a requisite of their studies?"

Yuuri, bowed over his own textbook and only half listening to Minako, shrugged. He found the Beauxbatons students interesting, certainly, but the analysis of the foundations of a water-making charm spread upon the pages before him were just as much at that moment. "Maybe."

"It's a good idea," Minako said decisively. Everything Minako did was firm and decisive, down to the way she dotted the period at the end of her sentence before dipping her quill in her inkpot once more. Yuuri spared a moment to glance at her where she frowned at her essay before she continued. "Integration of the arts into both education and society is proven to have significant positive effects upon the gross happiness of a culture and civilisation."

"You think so?" Yuuri asked, mostly as he had little else to say on the matter.

Minako spared him a glance in return, and her eyebrow quirked. "I know so. I read it in a paper."

"Then it must be true."

"I cross-referenced it."

"Okay. I believe you."

"And if you need further convincing –"

"I don't, really."

" – just look at yourself." Minako smiled triumphantly, as though she'd just won an argument that Yuuri hadn't even known he'd been sharing with her. "Only when you're out playing with the wind are you ever happier than when you dance."

Yuuri didn't reply to that but instead bowed his head and turned back to his book. He didn't deny it, either pertaining to dancing or the wind. Yuuri didn't think himself anything exceptional as a dancer, but he did enjoy himself.

Minako didn't seem to need a reply, however, and continued both with her inquisition into the Beauxbatons musical arts and with her essay. Yuuri listened with half an ear; he could appreciate her queries from an academic perspective, but his interests…

He'd grown to consider the Durmstrangs just a little more interesting. Such was how he found himself wandering around the Black Lake as often as the wider grounds in the days leading up to the first task.

The day Yuuri collided with Nikiforov hadn't been remarkable. If anything, it was decidedly unremarkable; the winds were relatively tame, the chill moderate, and in the centre of the lake, the derelict Durmstrang ship creaked absently to the sound of water lapping against its hull.

Chin tucked and eyes almost closed as they stared at his shoes, Yuuri walked with head bowed around the lake's shore. He'd made nearly an entire circuit, his feet leading him with a mind of their own on their idle trek back towards school, and the wind was more than making up for the time he would be bereft of its company. The whispers in his ear were such that he was all but wholly distracted from the Durmstrang ship itself.

 _-Coolness, winter coming, snow from on high-_

 _-A bird, twisting, soaring high above-_

 _-Happy, free, tumbling through the air, dragging curtains of whirlwinds behind, stirring leaves and branches and twigs and dirt -_

And finally _-Going? Leaving? Returning soon?-_

"I'll try and come out tomorrow," Yuuri murmured in reply to the wispy words. "If I get my homework done, I'll try to come outside again."

 _-Work, work, home, to work? Don't leave… don't leave…-_

The wind wasn't a whole entity. It wasn't contained in something as confining as a body, had no complete mind, wasn't even simply One but more many parts of a whole intertwined; like a tapestry, the threads that made up its entirety were both independent and a part of the greater picture.

Wind didn't think but it Felt. It didn't speak, but Yuuri heard could make out words nonetheless. 'Wind-whispering' was about as accurate a term as he could put to it, just as he'd been teased for doing, for he had no other way of describing his particular strain of magic. Sometimes gifts just manifested as such his parents, the Ministry assessor, and even Flitwick had told him. Sometimes there was no real explanation of the why, no more than there was of the how.

Yuuri closed his eyes as he felt the wind slip cold fingers through the open neck of his jacket. It slid around him, curling invisible arms around his legs, and dragged upon his trousers in a way that almost lifted him from his feet. Almost, but not quite.

"None of that," he chided, as though it were a small child. The wind, so free and taken by idly fancies, required definitiveness at times. "I'm not going to fly. No more flying."

 _-Fly, free, wonderful, happy –_

"Tomorrow," he murmured. "I said I'll try again to –"

A body crashed into him. Yuuri was nearly flung from his feet, and it was likely only the wind itself, still wrapped around his legs, that allowed him to remain upright. He barely had time to straighten, to turn and assess the cause of the collision, when hands grasped his shoulders and a voice exclaimed.

"Ah! I am so sorry! Much apologies, I did not look where I was coming!"

Yuuri froze. Not because of the words – thickly accented and skewed just slightly to muffle the flow of the English – but because of the glance he caught over his shoulder. He froze and he stared at the Durmstrang boy that he'd seen countless times but only ever from afar. Silver-haired, bright-eyed – bright _blue_ -eyed – and smiling in a mixture of merriment and apology.

And that smile was directed entirely towards Yuuri.

He wanted to speak. Yuuri wanted to speak just as much as he wanted to cut of his tongue and never speak again for fear of bumbling and making a fool of himself. He wanted to straighten and gush in self-introduction as much as he longed to turn tail and run, begging the wind to add speed to his escape.

Neither such thing happened. Yuuri didn't get the chance, for the silver-haired boy – he must have been at least two years older than Yuuri, was almost a man, even – took a step backwards. His hands patted Yuuri's shoulders as though to affirm that they were still there. "Truly, I am being very sorry to have run into you," he said, and despite the merriment in his tone he sounded genuine enough. "I was distracted by my Charming when I –"

"Nikiforov!" a voice shouted, and the silver-haired boy snapped his attention over his shoulder. In the distance, amongst a spread of thinly dressed Durmstrang students that looked to be in the midst of some kind of Charms game for the bright sparkles surrounding them, one raised their arm in a beckoning wave. They repeated the word – the name? – and then chased those words with a string of foreign dialect so fast that Yuuri doubted he would have been able to understand them even had he known which language was being spoken.

Nikiforov – for Yuuri wondered, thought, _hoped_ , even, that such was a discovery of his name – spared a moment to shout a reply to the distant caller. Then he glanced back towards Yuuri, spared him a smile, and released him. "Again, my apologies. I will be seeing you later?"

Then he was gone. He turned on his heel and disappeared in a flurry of cloak and long-legged strides that moved with the same graceful motions as the gesturing Yuuri had witnessed the first night he'd seen him. The night Yuuri couldn't forget and didn't want to, even though his curiosity was rather silly. It might be silly, but Yuuri…

Watching the Durmstrang boy break into a run, Yuuri felt a touch of a wondering smile settle on his lips. He was left with a name and something that could only be defined as mounting and terrifyingly embarrassing fascination.

The First Task of the Triwizard Tournament arrived. It came, it exploded into madness – of dragons and fire and golden eggs snatched by the stretching hands of determined champions – and then it was over. It closed, and the Second Task seemed so, so long away.

Yuuri was never more relieved that he wasn't old enough or foolish enough to have been chosen as the Hogwarts champion than when he stepped out of the grandstands after the First Task. He doubted he would have been chosen even if he _were_ old enough, for there were people far more exceptional than himself on offer, after all, but he was still relieved. So was Minako, for that matter. And Yuuko, and even Takashi finally ceased his speculations that "I think I would have put my name in the Goblet if I'd been old enough. I really think I would have."

Facing a dragon was insane. Definitely insane. Yuuri felt horribly sorry for Diggory, Delacour, and Krum, to say nothing of the poor Potter kid. He was younger than Yuuri, even; it hardly mattered that he'd scored so well in the first task, because it had been terrifying.

In some ways, Yuuri was even grateful. Grateful for who had been chosen, anyway. For reasons he couldn't quite comprehend, he was vastly grateful that the so-named Nikiforov hadn't been in Krum's shoes.

Nikiforov didn't accidentally crash into Yuuri again. He was almost regretful for that fact, though that regret faded as winter approached and he was afforded less of a first hand confrontation and more the seat of a distant, admiring spectator. Yuuri still walked outside – and always would, for the wind if nothing else – and he still wandered around the Black Lake and the Durmstrang ship almost every afternoon. He caught sight of the Durmstrangs as they wandered on the deck of their ship, or around the edge of the lake, or practiced their magic in ways that looked more and more like playing games the longer Yuuri watched. They didn't seem quite so stoic and grim after he bore witness to that little display. Rather, it made them seem remarkably more approachable, and Yuuri noticed the change in his perspective on a detached level.

What really changed, however, was the first time he saw Nikiforov alone.

The snow had begun to fall. Rugged in a thick coat courtesy of Yuuko's demand but an hour before when he'd said he might 'go for a walk', Yuuri wandered in the sole company of his wind through the grounds. He was absently skirting the Forbidden Forest when he first saw a flash of blue magical light.

Drawn like a moth to the flame, the wind whispering words – _bright, sharp, cold, magic –_ in his ears, Yuuri took himself just inside the tree line. A handful of steps, weaving through the trees and navigating the flutters of snowflakes as they fell in a gentle shower, Yuuri followed the call of magic and the wind.

And he saw.

Nikiforov wasn't dressed warmly enough for the winter, but then most of the Durmstrang students didn't seem to feel the descending cold of winter. Yuuri hardly noticed the minimal dress, however, for the boy – a boy who was nearly a man but still seemed younger for the childish delight upon his face – had his hands upraised and wand extended. Glittering torrents of blue magic cascaded forth, showering around him and falling like draping curtains to the ground that barely held a lick of snow yet. But Yuuri hardly saw that either.

He barely registered the graceful extensions of Nikiforov's hands as he turned in place. He hardly saw the moment the performer closed his eyes, smile widening, drifting in a sweeping turn in place amidst his magic in a way that Yuuri, as a dancer himself, was all too familiar with.

The magic. The spinning. The shower of blue and the wonder it produced in a denser flurry of snowflakes that _had_ to be from Nikiforov himself. It was far too dense for the mild shower of the first snows.

It was…

Ice-magic? Or snow? Snow–Charming? Yuuri had read of it but had found as little of the art as he had of Wind-Whispering. He couldn't help but stare for the wonder that it simply was.

To say that Yuuri noticed any particular part of the scene would be an understatement, for he didn't just see each part. He saw it all. He saw, he stared, and he couldn't look away, for the demonstration – of magic, of elegance, of blissful joy – was captivating to behold. So much magic. So much blue, and white, and just a hint of silver, dancing in conjured space like a theatre performance itself.

How long he watched Nikiforov that first time, Yuuri didn't know. Only when a particularly demanding gust of wind curled beneath his chin was he drawn from his staring and his captured thoughts. He started guiltily, shuffling in place. For whatever reason, he felt like he was peeping upon something he shouldn't be watching. Like the privacy that had Nikiforov smiling and casting his snow magic or whatever it was shouldn't have been witnessed without consent.

Shrinking backwards, Yuuri hastened from the scene without announcing himself. He shouldn't have watched, even if it was breathtaking to witness. He certainly shouldn't have stayed for as long as he had, and that duration was made only starkly more apparent as, climbing the hill back to the castle, Yuuri found himself nearly blinded by the darkness. It was strange that, on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, it hadn't seemed nearly so dark.

Yuuri chided himself as he slipped through the castle doors. He knew it was rude to spy on others without their permission. And yet that reprimand didn't stop him from glancing wistfully over his shoulder as he closed the doors behind him. It didn't stop him from returning to look, either. To watch again, because Nikiforov… With the coming of the snow, he seemed to flourish.

Winter fell and Nikiforov added his own magical snow to its midst in what Yuuri came to call his 'little glade' just inside the Forbidden Forest.

Once. Yuuri watched once, with wide eyes and open awe.

And then twice.

And then three times, and again, and again.

Whether it was the smiling boy himself, so different in his open satisfaction and delight for life to Durmstrang's representative Viktor Krum, or the magic itself that drew Yuuri, he wasn't entirely sure. Maybe it was a little bit of both. Certainly, Yuuri was more than captivated by the magic of which he knew so little about.

"Snow Charming?" Minako asked when Yuuri mentioned it in their evening study session. Two of Minako's sixth year friends sat on either side of her, and the sounds of the common room were a din of muted discordance around them. No one seemed to be listening, but Yuuri ducked his head with a wince at Minako's overloud exclamation. Or at least it sounded overloud to him; he'd never liked drawing undue attention to himself.

"I've only heard mention of such a thing," Minako continued. "Why do you ask?"

Yuuri shrugged. "No reason."

Minako snorted, an expression that would have likely seemed uncouth coming from her sleekly refined impression but was all too familiar to Yuuri. "You wouldn't ask for no reason, Yuuri."

"I was just curious," Yuuri muttered, keeping his eyes fixed upon his Transfiguration homework.

"Why? Why all of a sudden?"

"I just…" For whatever reason, Yuuri didn't want to admit what he'd seen of Nikiforov to anyone. Not Minako, nor even Yuuko or Phichit. It seemed somehow private, like the wonder of his observations would be taken from him should he reveal them. Or that he would be dubbed wrong for spying; that was a definite fear, too.

"I just came across it a little while ago," he finally finished, because Minako was regarding him unwaveringly. Like a dog with a bone, she likely wouldn't let the subject drop until she was better informed of the situation.

Minako seemed to accept his explanation as sufficient, for she nodded shortly. "Fair enough. Curiosity is the key."

"So it is," one of her friends murmured distractedly at her side.

"I suppose you could liken it to Water-Making Charms?" Minako continued, her words as much a question as a suggestion. She ignored her friend's absent interruption entirely. "You've read Gestup's _Working the Waves_ , haven't you?"

"Last week," Yuuri said.

"Well, then you'll know that…"

Yuuri fell back to listening with half an ear once more. It wasn't that Minako's words weren't interesting, but they weren't what he wanted to hear. Snow Charming really was unobtrusive if someone with Minako's tenacity had barely come across it. It somehow made Nikiforov and what he did that much more special. Special – and that much worthier of privacy.

So Yuuri watched, as he knew he shouldn't. He stared, as he was very aware was more than a little strange. He crept into the 'little grove' and peered through the trees of the Forbidden Forest as the evenings grew darker more quickly and colder just as much, with only the wind for his company.

The wind, and Nikiforov's magic.

For those weeks, Yuuri spent more time watching and adoring in his moments outdoors than he had in years. With the wind wrapped around his shoulders, poking around his legs like a curious puppy, he watched what could only be deemed incredible. Nikiforov was an artist with the snow, and though Yuuri didn't know why he took himself into the grove every other night to conjure his own with blue, sparkling magic, he felt somehow warmed by it. By the smile on Nikiforov's face. By the fact that he acted seemingly without purpose at all, simply revelling in the conjugation and the drapery of snow that blossomed around him.

It reminded Yuuri almost of himself somehow. Of how he could never quite explain to anyone why he adored his evenings in the embrace of the wind, even when the chill nipped at his fingers and numbed them into stiffness. Seeing Nikiforov as he was… It was like looking in a mirror.

When Nikiforov smiled, seemed at peace – blissful, ecstatic, and entirely detached peace – when he cast his magic. Yuuri knew how that felt.

He didn't speak when he conjured, as though the magic that blossomed forth in sparkling blue and white flowers to trail to the ground in flowing ribbons came so naturally that it barely needed wand-waving, let alone incantation. Yuuri knew how that felt, too.

Nikiforov almost danced as he moved, as though gripped by the magic, and it was so familiar to watch that Yuuri could almost feel it. Nikiforov lost himself – and it was enchanting, because Yuuri _knew_ that feeling, too. Like a mirror, the seventh year Durmstrang boy seemed to embody everything that Yuuri understood on an innate level yet couldn't describe.

Or at least a mirror it was almost a mirror. If Nikiforov was Yuuri's mirror, he was definitely a more polished, refined, and exceptionally _better_ than Yuuri, so much so that it hurt just a little to acknowledge his deficiencies. But even as it hurt, Yuuri still watched.

There were some days that Nikiforov didn't come. Some days, Yuuri would wander through the grounds, down and around the Black Lake and past the little grove at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and evidence of magically-conjured snow would absent. It was only to be expected, for Nikiforov surely couldn't come outdoors to frolic in the snow any more than Yuuri could do the same for the winds, but it still saddened him just a little bit. The forest seemed strangely empty without him.

Other days, he wasn't alone, and Yuuri found those instances to be almost as saddening as when Nikiforov wasn't there at all. Sad, because when he had company, Nikiforov didn't cast his snow-magic. Yuuri never remained behind for long when he heard echoing voices of foreign words and sharp accents ringing in the winter air.

And yet, despite that sadness, it somehow felt… nice. Nikiforov only cast his snow-magic when he was alone, except when Yuuri was watching. A small, niggling, and utterly mortified voice reminded Yuuri that Nikiforov didn't _know_ he was being watched, but it was smothered by the satisfaction that rose alongside it.

Yuuri's wind and Nikiforov's snow – it felt like a secret that only they shared. One that Yuuri wouldn't admit even to Nikiforov himself.

* * *

"… and so I told him that if he really wanted to learn, he had to come to more than one lesson, but I think he thought he'd be an expert after a single class." Yuuko sighed heavily, closing her eyes with dramatic world-weariness. Then they snapped open, as though called to attention by a silent voice, and Yuuri could feel her gaze pin him from behind. "Where exactly are you going?"

Yuuri paused with his hand on the primary castle door leading outside. He told himself that he shouldn't feel sheepish, that he was allowed to go where he wanted before curfew fell, but Yuuko's open curiosity and big-sister act could always halt him in his tracks. "Out," he said.

"Outside?" Yuuko frowned slightly, glancing up to Takashi at her side. The rest of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws that had surrounded them leaving Charms that afternoon were already drawing scattering every which way with their own agendas. Voices echoed off the cavernous stone walls of the Entrance Hall with their departure.

Yuuri nodded. He wasn't doing anything wrong. And he was allowed outdoors. He _was_.

"Yuuri, it's awfully cold outside," Yuuko said.

"I know."

Yuuko's frown deepened. "You're not wearing enough layers."

"It's alright. I'll just use a Warming Charm if it gets too cold."

That frown furrowed further until Yuuko's eyebrows seemed to nearly fall into her eyes. "Weather Watch says that there could be a blizzard coming through."

Biting back the tingle of excitement for the possibility – Yuuri _loved_ blizzards, loved the cold, the chaos of the wind, the flurry of ice – he shrugged. Yuuko accepted but had never quite understood the sincerity of his love for all things of wind and howling gales. "That's alright. I'm sure I'll survive."

"Weather Watch is hardly ever right in their predictions, anyway," Takashi pointed out. As Yuuko turned her frown briefly towards him, he shrugged. "What? I'm a Divination sceptic, what can I say?"

Yuuri thought Yuuko's frown was less for his scepticism and more for his unwitting defiance to her attempts to sway him, but he didn't say as much. Instead, tugging the doors open behind him to allow just a sliver of the wind's reaching fingers through the crack, he said, "I'll only be outside for a little while. I promise."

Yuuko turned back towards him and took half a step in his direction. "Then why don't we come with you?"

Suppressing the immediate urge to deny such a suggestion – because no one else could come out to see the snow and the wind, not when it was just he and Nikiforov – Yuuri sketched a smile upon his face. "It's fine. You don't like the cold."

"Then we'll just use Warming Charms, too," Takashi said, climbing the fence to Yuuko's side of the argument likely without even realising he did so. Yuuri spared him a momentary frown that he rebuffed with a smile.

"It's really fine," he said. "I'll be back before dinner."

"But," Yuuko began.

"And I'll even sit at your table without you having to drag me there," Yuuri interrupted her.

"But it's nearly dark already," Takashi attempted.

" _And_ I'll help you with your Charms homework," Yuuri finished, dangling the final piece of bait. "If you'd like."

Yuuko and Takashi both fell silent. Neither were appalling at Charms, but Yuuri knew their talents definitely lay elsewhere. Yuuko had a knack for Defensive magic, and Takashi's gift for remembering History facts was unparalleled. Charms, however, was Yuuri's area of expertise.

"You're bribing us," Takashi said bluntly. Blindsided, he clearly was not.

Yuuri didn't do him the disservice of denying the fact. He shrugged and nodded. "I won't be gone long."

After another moment of pause, with the ribbon of wind tugging persistently upon Yuuri's ankle, Yuuko finally sighed in defeat. Yuuri knew in that moment that he'd won the not-argument they'd been having; Yuuko was the deciding factor, after all. "Alright," she said. Then she raised a pointed finger. "But tomorrow afternoon, we're taking the dancing lessons."

"And you're invited," Takashi beamed.

Yuuri winced slightly. It wasn't that he disliked teaching dancing, but… "It'll be so embarrassing."

Yuuko smiled briefly, brightly, and her disgruntlement of moments before vanished like a snuffed candle. "Whatever for? You can dance perfectly fine."

"That doesn't make it any less embarrassing."

"Phichit's promised to take some good pictures for me," Takashi said with a grin.

"You're not helping, Takashi."

Both Yuuko and Takashi laughed, but no further objections were made. With a brief wave of farewell, Yuuri was slipping through the front doors of the castle seconds later. He might find dancing in front of others embarrassing, and teaching even more so, but if it would make Yuuko happy he would allow it.

Besides, for that moment, dancing lessons were far from the forefront of his mind. He strode into the evening, the wind, and the gradually falling snow. The prospect of watching Nikiforov's performance was the best kind of soothing balm to any kind discomfort.


	3. Chapter 3 - A Loss

**Chapter 3: A Loss**

Familiar music rippled through the open room, trilling in a gentle melody and grazing harmonic fingers across the walls. Yuuri lost himself to that music. It was calming. Soothing.

He didn't quite close his eyes, but he may as well have. It wasn't as though he truly saw the room when he was so lost in the music.

The hand clasped in his own barely held his fingers yet curled unyieldingly. The tightening of muscles in Yuuko's back and shoulders beneath his other hand was strangely enthralling more for the insinuation of dance and finesse than for her body itself. Feet sliding across the floor, they took a turn and started back across the room once more.

The waltz wasn't Yuuri's favourite dance, but there was a certain steady grace and comfort to the motions. A recovery, a repeat, falling back into the rhythmic steps that he could almost dance in his sleep.

A series of feather steps dribbled into a bounce fallaway.

A tumble turn drifted gracefully, naturally, into an overturned left lunge.

A hover, another series of feather steps, and he was skirting Yuuko, turning her in the natural curve of a telemark before starting in the opposite direction with rapid, fluid running steps once more.

The music was captivating. The dance itself even more so. That Yuuri danced with Yuuko was… It was all so familiar, so easy, that for a time he entirely forgot his embarrassment for the watching Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Or almost entirely.

As the music quivered, drawing to a close, Yuuri led Yuuko in another natural twist before, at a spur of the moment and to the closing of the music itself, he eased her into a sudden, shallow dip. Yuuko, being the practiced dancer that she was, followed his lead with ease, though even in the midst of his dancing distraction, Yuuri could see her smile spread with something like fond exasperation.

Then the music stopped. It ceased, disappeared, and a round of applause snapped Yuuri back to the present. In an instant, his dream state faded, the cloud-like drifting evaporated, and reality instilled itself with the force of a charging train.

Yuuri immediately flushed. For the umpteenth time in their dancing lessons, he wished he was instead dancing alone in a studio.

Lifting Yuuko in a recovery from their dip, he straightened, released her hand and his hold upon her upper waist, and took a step backwards. It wasn't that he didn't have confidence in his dancing skills – after dancing for over ten years and every summer since beginning at Hogwarts, he was comfortable enough in his steps – but the fact that fellow students were watching? That they saw him dance? That he was being watched and studied and potentially critiqued and… and…

The heat in Yuuri's cheeks felt embarrassingly warm, and that warmth was alleviated not in the slightest by the continued applause. Not by Sprout's approving nod as she too clapped alongside the students either.

Yuuko, ever the performer of the two of them, took a step forwards and bowed, her smile widening from exasperation into delighted pride. There wasn't a hint of arrogance to her expression, nothing but sweetness, and if anything, that smile revamped the applause.

"Wonderful," Sprout said. "Such a wonderful display, Nishigori, Katsuki." She shook her head, taking a step forwards to Yuuko's side before turning towards the spread of over two dozen students lining the walls of the pseudo-dance studio. "I'm sure everyone will join me in thanking our fellow classmates for their assistance today."

Murmurs of agreement that actually sounded genuine rung discordantly from the watching students, too mish-mashed to discern any particular words. Sprout seemed to deem it adequate enough, however, for she nodded her head approvingly, satisfied smile affixed. "That's a wrap, everybody. The next class will be this coming Thursday. I'd like to remind everyone that we will only be hosting three more of these classes before the Yule Ball arrives, so should any additional students which to attend, be sure to let your fellows know that…"

Yuuko shuffled backwards to Yuuri's side as Sprout continued. Watching the back of Sprout's head as though expecting to be hushed, she leant towards him with lips nearly brushing his ear. "You're cheeks are all pink."

Yuuri felt himself flush even more. "Shush."

Yuuko's smile quirked, and her apparent attempts to withhold her amusement clearly failed. "It's cute," she whispered.

"I know you're teasing me," Yuuri replied in his own whisper. "You always do. It's not like I can help it."

"You shouldn't have to. It's cute!"

 _"Yu-uko!_ " Yuuri hissed indignantly. Really, it was bad enough that he could never suppress such an instinctive response. That Yuuko seemed intent upon drawing attention to it whenever he became the centre of attention helped him not in the slightest.

Yuuko giggled quietly enough that Sprout, proceeding into a discussion of the necessities of the Yule Ball as she always did at the end of their classes, didn't appear to notice. "Oh, come on. You can't give me that. You were the one who dipped me so ostentatiously."

Yuuri couldn't exactly deny that. In hindsight, he couldn't fathom why he'd done such a frivolous thing. "It was a spur of the moment idea – and one I kind of regret doing."

"No, no, don't regret it," Yuuko said, patting his shoulder. "I think they appreciated it. Everyone gave you very approving nods, I saw. Very impressive, showing all your waltzing aptitude."

Yuuri bit back a groan. He was rapidly – very rapidly – regretting doing just that. Dropping his chin and raising a hand to his face, he did his best to hide what felt like another flush of redness to his cheeks and resorted back to the same distraction technique he always did. The one he _knew_ he did. "Technically dips are more common in the foxtrot –"

"Yuuri," Yuuko said.

"- and when you think about it, even though some people think they're similar, the foxtrot and the waltz are actually quite different –"

" _Yuuri_."

"– the music and the timing is different, and the… the _feeling_ is different, a matter of style and character, so it can't really be compared that they're actually –"

"Yuuri," Yuuko attempted again, patting his shoulder more pointedly this time, "before you get carried away, would you just –"

"Katsuki? Nishigori?"

At Sprout's words, both Yuuri and Yuuko fell silent. The short, plump little Head of Hufflepuff had turned towards them, eyebrows raised in vague expectation. For a moment, Yuuri couldn't recall what she was asking about – he hadn't been listening _nearly_ attentively enough – but Yuuko swooped in to his rescue.

"Of course we'll be here on Thursday, Professor," she said brightly, beaming in her usual guileless manner. Yuuri, never quite so capable of the same openness, only nodded his instant, and somewhat bemused, agreement. He often questioned that he allowed Yuuko to drag him into such endeavours; it was she that always urged him to partake in the summer dance academy performances, too.

Sprout similarly beamed at them both before turning back to the rest of the students. "Alright, then. Off with you all!"

In a rumble of movement and murmured conversation, the scattering of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, all ranging from fourth to seventh year and as mismatched week to week as the houses themselves, the room flowed into motion. Within moments, half had already disappeared through the doorway while the other half idled on their tail. Only the few usual overly helpful Hufflepuffs assisting Sprout to pack the old record player away.

Yuuri took himself to the side of the room where he'd left his school shoes in exchange for the ballroom pair. Yuuko followed him and, in a gradual wander, Phichit, previously stationed in his usual perch in the unobtrusive corner, right behind her.

Yuuri spared him a glance as he balanced from foot to foot to swap his shoes. Phichit appeared somewhat distracted by the item in his hands and, for what could have been the hundredth time that afternoon, Yuuri felt his cheeks warm. "You didn't take another picture, did you?"

Phichit's teeth flashed as his hand dropped seemingly unconsciously to the polaroid camera hanging from a strap around his neck. "Of course I did," he said, flipping a picture between his fingers as though conjured

Dropping the shoe in his hands, Yuuri made a grab for the picture. As though expecting it, Phichit danced backwards a pace, nimbly dodging his attempt. To Yuuko's giggles, he turned the picture towards them in proud presentation. "I think it's a masterpiece, truthfully."

For a moment, Yuuri had to cover his face with his hands in an attempt to regain a modicum of stability. Then, bending towards his bag at his feet, he extracted his glasses and slipped them on before peering at Phichit's displayed image.

He'd caught the dip, right in the second it happened. But, as it always did, Phichit's moving pictures bore its usual Phichit-flare.

Yuuri clapped his hands back over his face as Yuuko dissolved into giggles once more. "Phichit, I love it!"

"I thought you might," Phichit said, his smile apparent even to Yuuri's closed eyes.

"A real masterpiece."

"I think I captured the moment, right?"

"Very fluid. Very graceful. Yuuri, your extensions are divine."

"You can really see the evidence of a lifetime of ballet lessons, can't you?"

"And the near-drop when he dipped me?" Yuuko was giggling so fiercely that her words were nearly unintelligible. "Phichit, you caught that part _perfectly_."

"I did _not_ nearly drop you," Yuuri said, finally parting his fingers enough to shoot Yuuko an indignant frown. Only to have his gaze drawn back to where Phichit was still proudly presenting his picture.

It was a beautiful image, as Phichit always managed. That strange emphasis upon dark and light that only he seemed to manage, the fluidity of the figures within the moving stream that spun and turned as though they were real people... Even the moment when Yuuri dipped Yuuko, then slipped slightly in a manner that he hadn't in reality, was artistic. The figures within their little square frame wobbled and silently yelped at the near fall, Yuuko's image even windmilled her arms for a moment, before they caught themselves and began the dance all over again. Then the dip, the near fall, recovery and begin again.

Phichit's images really did bear their own particular style, there was no denying it. Worse was that Yuuri couldn't even be truly indignant, let alone angry, for Phichit always seemed so proud of his work. He was never cruelly teasing, either. He just thought it was fun. Funny.

"I think I'm going to stick it on my wall," Phichit was saying, and despite the embarrassment that Yuuri would likely always feel for that particular picture, he felt his mortification quell slightly for the fondness that sketched across Phichit's face. Phichit really wasn't cruel. Not in the slightest.

"Next time, you'll have to dance with me, I think," Yuuko said, crouching to swap her own shoes. "Then Yuuri can take a picture of _you_."

Phichit scrunched his nose. "Nah, I like taking the pictures."

"You have so many of everyone else; why not add some of yourself to your collection?"

With a shrug, Phichit dropped his gaze back down to the polaroid in his hands. "Why would I want to look at pictures of myself?"

Yuuri could understand that sentiment, if for different reasons. He'd never been one to enjoy being in the spotlight, even if he did so love the act of dancing itself. Phichit disliked it for another reason entirely: he liked to be the watcher, the capturer, the keeper of moments caught forever in his viewfinder. But even so…

"You haven't danced with us in a while," Yuuri said. "Don't you miss it?"

Phichit glanced towards him, raising an eyebrow. "We have weekend club dancing," he said.

"That hardly counts," Yuuko said. "Half of the members don't ever actually participate in the dancing."

"But the other half do."

"True."

"Besides," Phichit continued, "I'm not as good at ballroom as you two are."

In an instant, Yuuri – and Yuuko right alongside him – were blurting out their denials. Phichit _was_ good. He was _incredibly_ good. The only difference was that, for whatever reason, Yuuri and Yuuko seemed to dance slightly better as a team.

Phichit held up his hand in placation, though he smiled gratefully nonetheless. "It's okay, I can accept my inferiority. Like I can accept that my extensions aren't ever going to be as good as yours, Yuuri, and I'll never be able to turn as tightly as you, Yuuko."

"But you have way more charisma," Yuuri said, because it was true.

"And you've always been the best at lifts at our academy," Yuuko added. That was true too.

Phichit's smile widened into a grin. "True," he accepted, and that was the end of that. Yuuri dropped the suggestion as he had each dancing class prior.

They dressed themselves quickly enough, and before Sprout and her pair of helpers had departed the wide, high-ceilinged room, they were waving in farewell and stepping into the corridor. Yuuri began to drag his scarf from his bag, holding his gloves momentarily between his teeth as he did so.

Yuuko, naturally, noticed immediately. "Are you going outside again?"

Yuuri glanced towards her. The usual faint scolding – concerned as often as scolding – had her brow crinkling and lips pursing just slightly. He shrugged. "Mm," he hummed around his gloves.

"It's _cold,_ Yuuri."

"Which he likely prefers," Phichit murmured from Yuuri's other side.

"You're not helping me in my argument, Phichit," Yuuko said, turning her reprimand upon him instead with her hands dropping to her hips.

Phichit, riffling through a bundle of polariods that were likely entirely from that day's class, glanced towards her. "Sorry, sorry. Yuuri, it's really cold."

"Exactly," Yuuko said, as though Phichit's agreement somehow made her argument all the more valid.

It didn't. Yuuri knew it was cold – which he loved – and he knew that most other people would be curling up indoors to avoid that very cold. Most likely, the rest of the school would have deemed anyone inclined to head outdoors after the near-blizzard of the night before a crazy person. Those people were the ones that just as likely thought Yuuri more than a little strange, too.

But Yuuri was used to that. He was used to being deemed strange but just about everyone who wasn't already his friend or relative. That opinion persisted even when, occasionally of late, a few of his fellow housemates had approached him after witnessing his dancing in Sprout and Yuuko's classes to ask for pointers.

"Where am I supposed to put my hand, exactly?" one would ask, or, "I can't ever seem to get that little sliding step bit right." Just that. Just questions, and even thanks for any assistance that Yuuri would offer, but that and only that. After they'd asked their questions, after they'd been given what they needed, the usual distancing and disregard would fall between them once more.

Yuuri didn't mind. In many ways it was easier like that; he'd grown so used to being all but ignored, a consideration far preferable to his younger years of experiencing open derision, that it was disconcerting to be perceived otherwise. He liked helping if he could but… Well, it was embarrassing _._

Oftentimes, it was simply easier to be alone. Alone with the wind. Or alone and watching a certain Snow Charmer at work from a wistful distance.

"I know it is," Yuuri said as they took a corner and started down the stairs towards the Entrance Hall. He tugged his gloves on with more attentiveness than the action required. "But still."

"You went outside yesterday," Yuuko said.

"I know. The wind asked me to –"

"What if I said I wanted to study?" Phichit asked.

Yuuri glanced towards him, slowing in step for a moment. "Do you?"

Phichit's lips twitched. "Well, not _now_. But maybe in a little while."

"Then we'll go in a little while."

"Yuuri," Yuuko said warningly.

"It's fine, it's fine," Yuuri said with a wave of his hand. Then, before Yuuko could object further, he picked up his pace into a trot and all but leapt down the remaining stairs into the Entrance Hall. "I'll see you at dinner, alright?"

"Don't get frostbite!" Phichit called after him as he hastened through the front doors of the castle. The wind immediately buffeted him in a chilling blast.

"Phichit, that's not helping," Yuuko said indignantly, her voice echoing from the wide, open walls of the hall. "When I'm trying to convince him, you should be –"

Yuuri didn't hear what Phichit was 'supposed to be' doing. He was stepping into the snow-laden courtyard in seconds, and the torrent of frozen wind that wrapped around him and immediately infiltrated his ears was more than loud enough to drown out further words.

Why Yuuko cared so much, Yuuri doubted he would ever truly understand. Maybe she simply really did see herself as his 'onee-san', scolding and overprotective as Mari had never truly been. In reality, Yuuri loved her for it; it might grow a little tiresome in its persistence at times, but he did. Yuuko really did feel like his sister sometimes.

Except that, even at the request of a sister, he wouldn't cease his evening trips into the wind and snow.

It _was_ cold outside; Yuuko had been correct in that regard. The bitingly cold wind carried an edge of icily sharp teeth that always managed to infiltrate Yuuri's clothes, regardless of how many layers he wore. That evening was no exception.

And Yuuri loved it.

Filling his lungs with a deep, freezing breath, Yuuri squinted into evening. The spread of the grounds before him – the courtyard, heaped with snow at its borders, the pillars of the peristyle standing like shadowy figures, the gradual decline towards the Black Lake and the Forbidden Forest – were smothered in a grey-blue curtain of encroaching night. The days were growing shorter, and Yuuri couldn't help but regret that fact.

 _Soon, I might not be able to come out in the evening at all._

The thought was saddening, and for more than just that he would be leaving the doting embrace of the wind behind him. Yuuri had to shake his head to rid it of his moroseness. Clapping his hands to his cheeks, revelling in the sting upon his cold skin, he started at a quick step across the courtyard and into the grounds beyond.

The descent was a stumble as much as a step, but Yuuri didn't mind. The wind tickled his ears, freezing them almost painfully with whispers of _– cold, chilled, gloriously snowy, soft –_ and sighs of welcome that filtered throughout. The grounds seemed to grow darker with every step, but Yuuri felt lighter for it.

It could have been the wind almost carrying him as he'd asked it not to simply numerous times before. Or it could have been that, after dancing before half of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw house, getting away from people, even Yuuko and Phichit, was soothing.

But most likely, Yuuri revelled in the cold, the chill, and his descent towards the forest with the possibility that he would see Nikiforov.

"I wonder if he'll be there today," Yuuri murmured to himself. Except that, as attentive as the wind always was to him, it replied.

 _\- snow, clouds, cold, magic -_

 _\- blossoming, conjuring, building -_

 _\- searching? Seeing? Watching? -_

Yuuri smiled. Wind might not have a mind of its own, not as people did, but it was cluey enough to understand where his interests lay. It understood why he took himself to the Forbidden Forest as he did.

Crunching through the snow down the slope, Yuuri tugged his scarf across his lips. "Are you saying that he's there? Is he casting his Snow Magic?"

 _\- snow -_

 _\- ice -_

 _\- cold, sharp, biting -_

And then _– puppy! –_

Yuuri paused in step. He'd reached the edge of the tree line, but for a moment frowned and peered around himself at the indiscernible wind. It tugged at the hem of his coat, swirling around his ankles like an almost visible creature that became truly visible when it picked up snow to bulk out its wispiness.

"Puppy?" he asked. Words weren't truly words from the wind, were more of an interpretation that something within Yuuri innately. But… puppies?

 _\- puppy, puppy -_

 _\- yapping, barking, grumble, snap -_

 _\- happy puppy, jumping, leaping, snowy fur, frozen dribble, footprints in the snow -_

Yuuri shook his head. He'd never heard the wind speak to him like that before. To the sound of its bubbling amusement, he took himself into the woods, weaving his way through snow-heaped trees towards Nikiforov's little grove. The moment he beheld the scene, Yuuri ground to a halt.

He hadn't really expected to see puppies, or even just one puppy. But it seemed that Nikiforov, with his smiles and laughter and Snow Charming, would always surprise him, it would seem.

The puppy was yapping. It was barking, and grumbling, and snapping, just as the wind had said. Jumping and leaping, its fur was indeed thick with snow, dribble frozen around its chop,s and flurries of snow drifted into the footprints of its passage.

Except that it wasn't really a puppy at all. There wasn't really snowflakes in its fur or dribble frozen to its chin. The fur _was_ snow. The footprints in the snow _were_ patters of snowfall itself. It was indeed a puppy, but made entirely out of snow and ice.

The snow crackled and pattered like crunching ice, and those cracks and patters were the puppy's voice. It scampered around the little grove, dodging around trees, bounding, and tumbling, and collecting more snow to further solidify its form. Flopping ears and snowy curls flapped with each step, and its eyes, white and black and ice-blue, were alight with the brightness of winter.

A snow creature. Yuuri had never seen one before, had never ever heard of one, but he knew instinctively that such was what it was. And if anyone could have made it, it would be the smiling Snow Charmer Nikiforov.

Yuuri felt himself smiling, following the puppy's passage to the sound of the wind's crowing delight. The urge to reach out, to touch Nikiforov's creation as it darted past barely a handful of footsteps away without noticing him, was so profound he actually raised his arm. Such a wonderful thing, even the residual embarrassment from the afternoon's dance class faded away. Yuuri lost himself in the pure wonder of the magic.

Until he heard a voice bark in sharp exclamation.

In an instant, Yuuri's gaze snapped towards Nikiforov. He turned to where Nikiforov always stood at the opposite side of the little grove, upon the flattest part that Yuuri had noticed he cleared after every renewing snowfall into a plateau once more. Yuuri drew his gaze towards Nikiforov…

And he felt his smile die.

The Snow Charmer boy wasn't alone. Alongside him, wrapped in the thin coats that all Durmstrang students wore as they stoically pretended they didn't feel the cold, was Yuri Plisetsky.

The boy was short, a skinny twig of a third year, and the crop of his blond hair hung almost objectionably into his eyes. Yuuri knew of him. Of course he knew of him because everyone at Hogwarts knew Yuri Plisetsky, much as they did Viktor Krum. Plisetsky was Krum's cousin, after all; for no other reason than the champion's familial ties would the boy, younger even that Potter, be allowed to join his upperclassmen in their spectatorship rather than returning to school.

The kid was frowning, as he most often was that Yuuri had noriced. Frowning and grumbling, he spoke in rapid-fire words too fast for Yuuri to even attempt to understand. It didn't sound like French, though, nor even German. Something else? He wasn't sure.

Plisetsky was stomping a foot on the ground, though whether in an objection to accompany his words or to deny that he truly felt the cold was uncertain. He muttered and glared at Nikiforov, and Nikiforov regarded him with mild expectation in return, as though listening, considering, and entirely welcoming his words. His wand was raised, following the passage of the snow-puppy seemingly of its own accord, but he was listening nonetheless.

Yuuri felt something in his chest seize, and it was something achingly painful _._ That Nikiforov wasn't alone in itself wasn't unusual. Not surprising, even if Yuuri was somewhat disappointed. What was different was that he was Snow Charming. It was different because he was performing the magic that he never seemed to do before even his own friends, before no one but Yuuri, and Plisetsky was watching. Plisetsky _saw_ , and clearly had something to say about it too if his sudden and deliberate gesture towards where the puppy had dived nose-first into a snow pile was any indication. His sharp, foreign words rung through the grove and seemed to disrupt everything that was beautiful, and peaceful, and perfect about the moment.

It had been Yuuri's grove. Yuuri's and Nikiforov's, even if only Yuuri knew about its exclusivity. Maybe it was foolish of him to think it so. It most likely – most definitely – was. And yet…

It had been theirs. Theirs, and no one but Yuuri had seen Nikiforov casting his Snow Charming.

Betrayal was a foolish word to deem the situation. Foolish, but Yuuri felt it. Of course others would know of Nikiforov's skills. Of course others would watch and, as was apparent with Plisetsky, even have the right to comment upon that magic.

But it hurt.

The wind curled an embracing hand around Yuuri's ankle, the chill biting through his trousers. It snaked soothing fingers into his coat, not understanding – for it could never understand – but recognising his distress nonetheless. His foolish, stupid, irrational distress.

Blinking rapidly, his eyes stinging, Yuuri turned from the grove. The grounds were darkening, the snow cover seeming starkly brighter for it, but the descending night wasn't why he retreated. Yuri Plisetsky's words, and worse, Nikiforov's reply, rung after him as he hastened away from the Forbidden Forest. Within a handful of steps, he was running.

It was stupid. Stupid, immature, and irrational. Yet for some reason, it _hurt,_. because Nikiforov had been like Yuuri. They had unwittingly shared their similarity, and now it wasn't theirs anymore.

Yuuri ran and, for the first time in a long time, he allowed the wind to add speed to his strides. Even so, his flight back to the school didn't feel nearly fast enough.

* * *

The journey westward through the school to Ravenclaw Tower was long and winding. An escalation of stairs, passing down straight and winding corridors alike, it was a common joke amongst housemates that they were so precariously and distantly perched in deference to their House mascot.

Yuuri didn't run the whole way there. He barely managed to keep running when he staggered through the doors into the Entrance Hall, the wind's trailing fingers releasing him and slowing his headlong flight as it did.

Breathing heavily in pants that became slower huffs and then nothing but melancholic sighs, Yuuri trudged back to his common room. It seemed both ;pmg and far too short a trip, and he paused for a long moment outside of the handle-less door, staring at the animated raven knocker. He could swear that the sombre, sleepily blinking statue of Rowena Ravenclaw alongside the door was watching him with something very like understanding as he did so.

Maybe the raven was feeling generous that day. Maybe it could sense that Yuuri wasn't in the mood and some inkling of its magic offered him an easy riddle for entry.

Or maybe it was secretly sadistic, for Yuuri couldn't help but wince as it ruffled its bronze feathers, beak opening in utterance.

 _"I am something when I am not known, and yet nothing when I am. What am I?"_

Closing his eyes briefly, Yuuri dropped his chin. It really was too easy, and far too pointed for his circumstances. "It's a…"

 _"I am something when I am –"_

"A secret," Yuuri said before the raven could fully repeat itself. Patience was, ironically, not a virtue of the Ravenclaw door-knocker. "A secret is nothing if it is known."

The raven clicked its bronze beak, neck feathers ruffling once more, before the door swung inwards.

Ravenclaw Tower was home, of a sort. Yuuri had thought as much from the moment he'd stepped within its high, arching walls. That as much as anything told him that, for all that his family had been Hufflepuffs, and for all that Yuuko believed he had been somewhat misplaced, Ravenclaw suited him.

It was wide. It was airy, and a constant draft – not cold, but maintaining consistent air movement nonetheless – swept around the room and gently ruffled the heavy blue and bronze curtains. The windows were fogged with frost, blotting out the gradually increasing snowfall that had just begun to kick up its pace as Yuuri fell back between the school's smothering walls.

Navy blue carpet speckled with stars reflected a similarly blue sky studded with mirroring pricks of stars. The crackling fire, tinged blue from magic or ambiance or simply perspective, flooded the room with gentle warmth that was only intensified by the proximity of bodies. It looked to be the entirety of Ravenclaw House for how crowded the common room was.

Yuuri paused just inside the door, gaze drawing briefly across the segregated clusters of students. He knew them all, even if he didn't quite 'know' them. Not personally. Not really. None spared more than a glance for him as he closed the door gently behind him, just as had been he way for years. Yuuri found he wasn't averse to such disregard.

The first years had gravitated towards the fire, lying as much on top of one another as upon their designated couch. The Johnson twins were in the throughs of a fierce debate in the very centre of the common room, one that barely a single person spared an ear or rolled eye for; the twins were frequently embroiled in debate. Their group of friends slumped around them and paid them just as little attention. The sixth years that always gravitated to the couches alongside the bookshelves were in the midst of erupting in a chorus of laughter, and Yuuri spared them a sidelong glance before disregarding them.

Across the room, Minako sat with her two closest friends, in deep discussion as they completed – or pretended to complete – their homework, while Yuuri's own yearmates were lounging about one of the many desks and chatting idly. All but Monty Reyes, that was, who was perched on the edge of his chair like a little raven himself, knees drawn to his chest and poring over a book so intently that his nose touched the pages. Monty was… a little strange. He was probably Yuuri's closest dorm mate.

It was the weird ones, the strange ones, the _outcasts_ , that Yuuri knew the best. In his brief, detached glance, a glance more to distract himself from the nagging thoughts that clamoured for attention in his mind, he took note of their familiar faces, bowed over books or gazing absently into nothingness. There was Kyra Malka, braiding her hair with little blue ribbons before the hearth and wrapping even more into every strand from the tangle spilling across her lap. Straight-backed and gaze downcast, Otabek Altin stared at the textbook spread before him on his desk with such intensity that he seemed to be more focused upon burning a hole through the pages than actually reading it.

The little third year girl Luna Lovegood appeared to be talking to herself, or to the ceiling. or perhaps even a ghost, while Even Happenstock was having what appeared to be another one of his crises that the few other second year boys didn't seem capable of pulling him from. He as rocking dangerously upon his seat, gaze narrowed and audibly hissing, "But it doesn't make sense!" as he gestured towards his parchment essay.

Yuuri didn't know what 'didn't make sense' to Even. Very little seemed to.

Stepping into the room, Yuuri made short work of skirting the common room – and avoiding Minako's notice, which was his main objective. He didn't want to speak to her at that moment. He didn't think he wanted to truly speak to anyone; he felt like a fool, and each moment spent pondering his foolishness left him feeling even more stupid. Nikiforov's 'secret' wasn't his. The Snow Charming, and the wonder, and the – the _similarity,_ the _sameness_ that Yuuri had perceived. It was all just that. A perception.

Nikiforov wasn't… his. He wasn't his anything. Yuuri didn't know the Durmstrang boy. Not like Plisetsky clearly did. Nikiforov likely wouldn't even show Yuuri his Charming if Yuuri asked and that…

That hurt perhaps most of all.

Yuuri almost made it to his dormitory. Almost, but not quite. He should have expected Kenjirou Minami to notice his entrance.

"Hey, Yuuri! I didn't see you come in!"

Pausing with his hand on the doorknob into the fifth year boy's dormitory, Yuuri glanced over his shoulder. Kenjirou was bounding up the stairs after him, nearly slipping in his exuberance, and it was likely only the noise of chattering Ravenclaw students that kept every eye from swinging towards him as he really did trip on the second landing.

Kenjirou was… Yuuri didn't think he'd ever understand him. Not how he could maintain such joviality and enthusiasm every moment of the day, and certainly not why he seemed intent upon following Yuuri like a shadow most of the time. Ever since Yuuri had assisted him with his first year Charms homework, he seemed to have developed a strange idolisation for him.

"He's imprinted like a duckling," Minako had said with an outburst of laughter, and Yuuri couldn't help but think maybe she was a little correct in her turn-a-phrase.

"Where've you been this afternoon?" Kenjirou asked as, with a murmur of greeting, Yuuri slipped inside his dormitory. Kenjirou, naturally, followed on his tail.

"Dancing class," Yuuri said as he crossed the room towards his bed, unwinding his scarf as he went. The dormitory was a mimic of the common room, with high ceilings, gentle draft, and a predominance of blue curtains and bronze bedsteads. Yuuri plopped down upon the edge of his bed with a sigh.

"Dancing classes?" Kenjirou scampered after him. Technically, dormitories were year-exclusive, but Kenjirou had never been one much to abide by those rules. He was one of the strange ones, too. "Is that for the Yule Ball? Are you learning how to dance? No, wait, you already know how to dance, don't you? Except that you do ballet and – what was the other one?"

"Contemporary," Yuuri said, keeping his gaze dropped as he plucked his gloves off with more concentration than the task warranted. "But I take ballroom classes with my friends Yuuko and Phichit in the summer."

"Really?" Kenjirou exclaimed. He sounded delighted for his apparent discovery. "I didn't know that. That's so cool, Yuuri! How come I didn't know that?"

In the face of Kenjirou's enthusiasm, Yuuri couldn't help but smile just a little bit. Even with the weight of disappointment and something deeper, something that twinged painfully in his chest, Kenjirou's excitement for life was just a contagious. Kenjirou might not be Yuuri's friend, exactly, but he was a constant source of brightness.

"Probably 'cause I didn't tell you," Yuuri said.

Kenjirou pouted. "You should've told me then."

"Do you like dancing?"

"I've never done it before." With a final, slightly indignant huff, Kenjirou took himself to Yuuri side. He didn't seat himself on the bed beside him, however, but instead dropped onto his haunches before him. He looked almost like a puppy.

Yuuri stamped out the thought as soon as it arose. He didn't want to think of puppies at that moment. With a mental shove, he propped his hands behind him and leant backwards with as much casualness that he could manage. "You could try, you know."

Kenjirou hummed, tugging at the vibrantly pink curl of his fringe. "I don't know if I'd be any good."

"You'll never know if you don't try."

"Tru- _ue_ ," Kenjirou said, drawing out the word. "Not in time for the Yule Ball, though."

"You're not allowed to go to the Yule Ball," Yuuri pointed out. It was a common source of disgruntlement amongst the younger years; no student below fourth year could attend, and Kenjirou was one of those many who had a problem with that fact.

"I _know_ ," Kenjirou said, pout deepening. He propped his elbows on his knees, chin dropping atop his knuckles. "Not unless an upperclassman asks me." He sighed expansively, then darted a glance towards Yuuri. "The dancing classes are for the Ball, right?"

Yuuri nodded. "Right."

"And you're helping everyone learn how to dance for the partner bit, right?"

"Right."

"So who are you going with?"

The twinge in Yuuri's chest sparked once more. It was stupid, _so stupid_ , but he'd hoped… Somewhere within him, some feeble and irrational hope was that he might one day pluck up the courage to ask a certain Durmstrang boy to accompany him. It might have been unconventional, it was true, and he didn't know if many of the Hogwarts students would accompany their guests as partners, but Yuuri didn't care about that. The greater challenge had been the prospect of asking in the first place.

But he'd thought it would work. That it _could_ work. Because he and Nikiforov shared something, even if Nikiforov didn't know it yet. Even if Yuuri's secret idol – for he'd deduced his own idolisation long ago – didn't even know he existed.

That had changed now. Yuuri wasn't special, and certainly not to Nikiforov with his wondrous magic. The magic he showed to Plisetsky, but not Yuuri.

"I'm not going with anyone," Yuuri said, and though he pasted a smile upon his face, one he forced to be carefree, it hurt to say. "There's no one that I really want to go with."

Kenjirou straightened. Then he grinned. "You could go with me if you want."

Yuuri blinked. His mouth opened, closed, and he blinked rapidly once more. Before he could manage to get a word out, however, Kenjirou dissolved into giggles that shook his shoulders with genuine merriment.

"Sorry, sorry," he said, waving a hand at Yuuri. "I know you wouldn't really want to go with me. Even if you were looking for a Ball date, you'd surely want to pick someone better at dancing, right?"

Yuuri opened his mouth to reply, but found himself locking his jaw a moment later. It wasn't because Kenjirou had so readily laughed it off, or because he hadn't the words to say in reply. _I wouldn't mind going with you, Kenjirou,_ he could have said, and meant it, for they weren't truly friends, weren't really close enough to be friends, but Kenjirou was fun enough to be around. _I wouldn't mind at all_.

And yet he heard something. In Kenjirou's words, he heard the unspoken and unacknowledged thoughts that had rapidly overwhelmed him in the space of barely half an hour. Kenjirou spoke to him as though he admired him. As though it wouldn't happen because they were on different planes of existence. As though… as though Yuuri wouldn't _want_ to go with him because there were others, surely others, that he would want to attend with. It didn't matter Yuuri's opinion at that moment, or whether he deemed it correct or otherwise. Kenjirou had decided.

Yuuri heard himself in Kenjirou's words. He saw Nikiforov and he understood that. Nikiforov would have someone else to attend the Yule Ball with. He would never choose to go to the with Yuuri, even had Yuuri the courage to ask. And Yuuri wouldn't. He and Nikiforov… They were on different planes, too. Parallel lines that didn't interact.

Kenjirou was talking again, and Yuuri had to struggle to drag his attention back to him. "It's not like I really mind all that much," he said. "Mum would probably give me a whopping if I didn't come home for the whole holidays anyway. And I can't say I'm unhappy to get away from school for the _whole_ holidays, unlike everyone staying for the ball. That's a bonus, right?"

"Right," Yuuri agreed, and he smiled even if he hadn't felt less like smiling in a long time. "You're a very optimistic person, Kenjirou. Has anyone ever told you that?"

Kenjirou beamed as though he'd been paid the highest compliment. The pointed tips of his canines prodded his lower lip in a manner that Yuuri had always thought was childishly adorable. Maybe he was more like a cat than a dog? "All the time! My mum actually says I'm her lil' glass-half-full baby, whatever that means, but I guess it's a good thing? She's always coming up with names like that, and I always tell her…"

Kenjirou continued at a million miles an hour and Yuuri simply listened. It was easier to just listen. Easier not to think and to reply to Kenjirou with casual conversation rather than lose himself in his melancholy.

Yuuri might[LA1] , _might,_ go outside again tomorrow, but he didn't think he'd be going back to the little grove. Not anymore.

* * *

[LA1]ig


	4. Chapter 4 - A Crack

**Chapter 4: A Splinter**

Vanishing spells were a thankless task. That success was only deemed complete when the entirety of one such object was entirely vanquished was far from a reward. What kind of a reward took away the source of interest?

Yuuri thought that the lyrebird feather McGonagall had given him was rather pretty, too. It wasn't like he wanted to Vanish it.

To say that the majority of the fifth year Ravenclaws and Gryffindors were enthusiastic throughout their Transfiguration class would have been an exaggeration. To claim that any of them were particularly enthusiastic at all when McGonagall told them that Vanishing Spells would be the focus of their class for their rest of the afternoon was even less remarkable.

Mutters, demands, even pleas of _"Evanesco!_ " had long since faded into further mutters that sounded distinctly other to the required incantation. Around Yuuri, the distinct murmur of conversation sounded in a direction that was distinctly apart from their classroom work.

"Have you finished that Potions essay yet?"

"I was going to head down to the library to try and sweet-talk Pince into pointing me towards the books on Screechsnaps…"

"Friday is _ages_ away, though, so if you wanted to go on the weekend…"

"… one more week, but I have to go home for Christmas…"

"… don't even like…"

"… can you help me with…?"

"… swear McGonagall leaves a window open or something in here. It's so draughty!"

Yuuri could agree with that last, at least. Except that to him, he thought the draught quite agreeable. And the draught, it would seem, quite liked him too given that his ankles felt nearly frozen solid for the way it coiling cat-like around his legs beneath his trousers.

He didn't mind. If anything, Yuuri quite liked it, especially given he hadn't been outside for days. The wind felt neglected, he knew.

An overloud sigh at his side drew Yuuri's attention towards where Monty Reyes sat in his usual slouch. His raised knee – always his left one – butted against the table as he frowned and prodded his own feather with his wand. It looked like bird of paradise tail feather, curling and a vivid green. Yuuri couldn't help but feel wistfully regretful that McGonagall had given them such a range of beautiful feathers to vanish. Wouldn't she have preferred to preserve them?

Or maybe she was simply silently stating her lack of faith in their abilities. Yuuri wouldn't put it past McGonagall; he'd discovered over the years that she had something of a dry sense of humour.

"Bloody feather," Monty muttered.

"What about it?" Yuuri asked, because even if Monty had been speaking more to himself than to Yuuri, that he spoke at all warranted a reply. Monty didn't usually speak at all.

Monty didn't glance towards him, but he frowned nonetheless. "My theory is that this feather is so flamboyantly vibrant that it ignores any magical encouragement to vanish. That's obviously the only reason my feather is still here."

Yuuri stared at Monty's feather where it lay unresponsive, then up to Monty's face. Then he glanced back down again. He plastered a smile upon his face. "Yes, Monty, I'm sure that's the reason."

Monty glanced at him sidelong. Far from accusing, the glance bespoke commiseration. "I know, right?"

"It was a little strange McGonagall gave us such superb feathers."

"Right?"

"She probably doesn't want us to vanish them at all."

"That's what I thought."

Muttering beneath his breath, Monty leant forwards in his seat and jabbed at his feather once more. Yuuri bit back a bubble of laughter, glancing towards the front of the room. He thought McGonagall looked like she'd been staring in their direction, but he couldn't be sure. Was that a smile upon her lips?

"Do you think if I appropriated the feather into my quill collection it would be considered the same as making it disappear?"

Glancing to his left, Yuuri flicked his gaze between Phichit and his own feather. As always, Phichit had planted himself at Yuuri's side. Despite having a wealth of Gryffindor friends, all of whom were seated alongside him in a line, Phichit had religiously reserved the seat for himself. Yuuri far from minded. If anything, he was whole-heartedly grateful for the fact. Monty wasn't annoying as such, but…

"I think that would be a different kind of disappearing," he said. "There's a name for that, I'm pretty sure."

Phichit's flashed Yuuri his toothy grin. "That so?"

Yuuri nodded, smiling in return. "I believe it's called stealing."

"Killjoy."

"I'm just being realistic."

"You're just being a Ravenclaw, you mean." Phichit sighed. "I thought it was a wonderful solution to the problem of being unable to cast a Vanishing Charm."

"Do you really think you could even write with a peacock feather?" Yuuri asked.

Phichit picked up his feather, twirling it between his fingers so the opalescent sheen sparkled just slightly. "I think I could give it a good go."

"You don't _have_ to prove your point," Yuuri said, propping his chin atop a hand as he watched his friend wield the makeshift quill.

"You underestimate Gryffindor tenacity," Phichit said as he dipped the peacock quill into his inkwell.

"Gryffindor stupidity, you mean," Yuuri heard Monty mutter. Yuuri didn't wholly agree, but he didn't quite disagree enough to correct him.

As it happened, whether from McGonagall's obliviousness or oversight, the rest of the class passed in a sluggish drag of Phichit attempting to wield his acquired peacock quill, Yuuri drawing invisible shapes with the ribbons of wind as it tangled around his fingers, and inane chatter the likes of which drifted to longing for warm fires and far off weekends. Such was often the way with last period. By the time the bell sounded, most students were already packed and rising to their feet.

McGonagall collected the feathers, and if she was one or two short it was far from being a result of successful Vanishing. Phichit's interest in ornate quills seemed to have been modelled by a number of their classmates.

"Are you heading outside this afternoon?" Phichit asked.

Yuuri paused in the act of slinging his bag over his shoulder. Monty was still in his seat, frowning and muttering to himself about something or other that could have been pertaining to Vanishing spells or something else entirely. Behind Phichit, a handful of Gryffindor boys and girls slouched against their desks, ignoring Phichit's words but clearly waiting for him nonetheless.

Yuuri bit his lip as he dropped his gaze to his bag. Fiddling unnecessarily, he delayed his reply. He wasn't – not really. He wasn't going outside, even if he wanted to. Which he did; Yuuri sorely wanted to, and not only because the trickle of wind in the classroom had been whispering with longing for company that he'd barely been able to soothe. He wanted to search for the little grove, to watch a certain Durmstrang boy work his magic, to marvel at someone who was so different and yet strangely similar to himself.

But Yuuri wouldn't. He couldn't. It hurt just a little to think about, because those differences had become even more starkly apparent in the past days of thought. Finally, he shook his head. "I wasn't going to, no."

Phichit was quiet for so long that Yuuri eventually dragged his gaze upwards to meet his friend's. Phichit's eyebrows had risen, his blinks slow and just a little incredulous. "That's five days running."

"What?" Yuuri asked, even knowing exactly what he was referring to.

"Five days. Five whole days since you've been outside just to – to wander around or whatever."

Yuuri shrugged. "It's cold outside."

"I know, but –"

"With winter getting even colder as it statistically will, it wouldn't be realistic to think that I'd go outside every single day, even if my habits in the past might indicate such a tendency. And I thought about what Yuuko said and –"

"But don't you –?"

"- she's probably right," Yuuri continued, because he couldn't quite stop himself. "I mean, I _did_ have that frostbite scare a last year, so maybe I should be a little more careful –"

"Yuuri –"

"- and it's not like I can't talk to the wind through a window or something if I really need to." Yuuri painted a smile upon his face and hoped it looked genuine. "One of the great things about having wind as a friend is that it's always everywhere whenever you turn to it. Maybe that's a little indulgent to expect something like that from a friend, but –"

"Yuuri." Phichit clapped a hand on his shoulder, not hard but firm. Yuuri immediately fell silent. He knew he babbled when he was trying to avoid something, but that understanding rarely did much to assist him with biting his tongue. "Merlin, calm down for a second, would you? I'm not going to scold you or anything."

Yuuri chewed on his lip for a moment longer before forcing himself to stop. "Right."

"I'm not going to pretend it isn't a little unexpected – I mean, you _always_ go outside in winter, so it's stranger that you wouldn't – but that wasn't why I was asking. You clearly don't want to talk about it, so I won't mention it."

"There's nothing –" Yuuri began, before he cut himself off. It was a disservice to Phichit and his kindness to disregard the leeway he was offering him. That he wasn't pulling Yuuri up on his haphazard abnormality, even though he clearly noticed it, said something of his friendship. None of the rest of his friends truly understood Wind Whispering, either how he did it or why he felt the need to do so every day, and Yuuri couldn't explain it. Yet Phichit, and Yuuko, and Takashi, and Minako – all of them stuck by him anyway. Even Kenjirou, who knew little enough about it and was more of a tag-along puppy than an accompanying friend, didn't seem to care.

Phichit didn't pull Yuuri up on his stoppered denial either. Instead, he simply smiled and clapped Yuuri's shoulder once more. "I actually just asked to know if you wanted to come with us for the battle this afternoon."

"The battle?" Yuuri asked, cocking his head.

Phichit grinned. Over his shoulder, Yuuri saw several of the abruptly attentive Gryffindors similarly grin. "A battle to the death," Phichit said. "The storm last night left a pretty thick layer of snow, or so I've heard."

Understanding dawned and Yuuri found himself smile as well. "Well, I can't really pass up an opportunity like that, can I?" he said, and that much was true. Yuuri might feel confounding reluctance to go outside, but to miss a snowball fight with the Gryffindors? Never.

Yuuri wasn't particularly close to any of those Gryffindors, but they accepted his company without complaint. As a group of barely half a dozen – the Ravenclaws hadn't glanced at Yuuri sideways when he left – they hastened on excitable feet towards the Entrance Hall. Echoes of laughter and animated chatter followed them, more resounding than even those of the first years that they briefly passed in the corridor. Yuuri wasn't one much to join in with the festive air, but he enjoyed it nonetheless. If nothing else, Gryffindors were… well, they certainly created a different ambiance to the Ravenclaws.

Phichit was walking at his side, chatting to Gideon Malloy as he fiddled with his camera around his neck, but as ever with Phichit, he somehow managed to avoid excluding Yuuri. Yuuri wouldn't have minded if he had, but Phitchit simply wasn't the sort of person to allow such an oversight.

"How did you even get a picture of her _looking_ at you?" Gideon was saying, shaking his head in wonder as Phichit showed him a shot on his minute screen. The camera was 'old and all but useless' according to Phichit, but he loved it nonetheless. Just as he loved every one of his cameras. Yuuri considered that he must have had the snowball fight in mind that morning for him to so outfit himself with one of his more weathered models.

Phichit grinned. "I'm secretly a ninja, didn't you know?"

"A ninja?" Gideon raised one thick eyebrow. "What even is –?"

"Look, Yuuri, you'll appreciate this." Turning from Gideon, Phichit twisted his camera so Yuuri could take a look. Yuuri squinted at the minute image depicted. "Impressive, don't you think?"

The girl was beautiful, of course. Yuuri had known she would be before Phichit even shown him the image because he'd already suspected who Gideon referred to. "Have you asked her to the Ball yet?"

Phichit dropped his gaze down to the screen as he turned it back towards himself. "Nah," he said, shrugging easily. "Sara Crispino is way out of my league."

"I don't think so," Yuuri said, for even if the Beauxbatons girl was above and beyond most people, he couldn't think of anyone worthier of anything than Phichit. "You know her actual name now."

"Yeah. I asked."

"You asked? But you didn't ask her to the Ball at the same time?"

"Well, her brother was _right there,_ and he was kind of giving me the stink eye, so… whatever, you know?"

From anyone else, Phichit's words might have sounded wistful, or even morose. Not to Yuuri, though. Yuuri could count on one hand the times Phichit had ever appeared morose. They were few, far between, and nothing short of fleeting. When Phichit said he didn't mind, insinuated that he wasn't truly all that interested, Yuuri believed him. He likely barely even liked the girl.

"I've got some pretty awesome pictures of the Beauxbatons students, though," Phichit was saying, clicking through his camera. He'd long ago mastered the art of walking without looking where his feet took him.

"Got tickets on yourself, have you?" Janice Little said, poking her head over Phichit's shoulder and nearly whacking him over the head with one of her braids as she did so. She was teasing, of course. Everyone acknowledged Phichit as an incredible photographer in his own right.

For himself, Phichit barely spared her a glance as they continued to walk. "Look here: Beauxbatons, Beauxbatons, Beauxbatons – wait, is that… did Snorton photobomb me? Another Beauxbatons, another one. Oh, hey, Yuuri. I've got a pretty good shot of the Durmstrang crew here, too."

Yuuri was listening to Phichit with only half an ear, glancing vaguely to the two girls chatting on his other side. At Phichit's words, however, he turned towards him. "Sorry?"

Phichit tipped his camera towards him once more. "See? I think I got at least half of them all in one go, which is pretty good I reckon, seeing as…"

Yuuri stared at the camera, at the image depicted, and barely heard the rest of Phichit's words. His gaze searched, fleetingly saw familiar figures – Phichit had managed to group both Krum and his little cousin Plisetsky in the one shot – and hastily deflected his gaze when he saw Nikiforov's familiar silver head.

It almost – no, it _did_ hurt. Stupidly, irrationally, and definitely excessively, for Yuuri had neither known the other boy nor actually been snubbed by him. But it hurt to see him and be reminded of everything Yuuri had been trying to forget over the past few days.

Like Snow Charmers. And a puppy made of ice and swirling frost. And the wonders of what was only theirs to share suddenly encroached upon by someone else…

Stupid. Irrational. Unfair, even. And yet Yuuri felt that pain nonetheless. He spared Phichit as much of a smile as he could manage before glancing away, making a show of tucking his scarf more tightly into place. Phichit either didn't mind or allowed him to retreat into his muffled melancholy.

Yuuri was good at melancholy at times. Or maybe very bad at it for how often it afflicted him; he wasn't sure which.

It was with a certain weight upon his shoulders that Yuuri exited the castle, and yet it lifted somewhat as soon as the wind struck their small group. It had only been a few days. Only a few, and yet the wind had missed him terribly. Yuuri could feel it and he couldn't help but smile at its sudden, loving embrace.

"Merlin, that wind is _biting_ ," one of the Gryffindors said from behind him.

"Are you giving up already, Curtis?" Janice asked.

Yuuri glanced towards them and caught Phichit's eyes. Phichit's very knowing eye and knowing smile and – Yuuri wasn't sure, but he wondered if Phichit might have orchestrated the snowball fight for him just a little. Or at least intentionally and deliberately invited Yuuri along.

Not that it mattered. Yuuri hadn't realised how dampening being away from the wind and the outdoors had been. He was nothing but thankful to Phichit, regardless of how the circumstance had arisen.

With a general aura of excitement, Yuuri and the Gryffindors all but tumbled down the steps from the castle and hastened down the hill in the direction of the forbidden forest. Snow crunched underfoot, the wind tore at their beanies, scarves, and coats so that they flapped like a wild flurry of wings. Yuuri felt the lightness of its familiar touch brushing aside what remained of his rapidly retreating solemnity, and he was smiling when Phichit abruptly drew to a stop.

"Alright, alright!" he announced, his voice almost swallowed by the excited buzz of chatter. Faces with rosy cheeks and pink noses turned towards him, bright eyed and grinning. "Every man for himself, I request."

"Sudden death!" someone exclaimed.

"Not teams?" said another.

"No teams, dammit, that's so boring."

"Too much organising."

"We could just divide and –"

"Solo players!"

Voices rolled over one another, and Yuuri barely heard them. He didn't have much of an opinion about _how_ they played. Snowball fights were fun in any form they came. The Gryffindors made it a competition, almost brutally so, but Yuuri didn't mind that so much either.

When the babble escalated into mindless confusion, Phichit was the one to override it once more. He wasn't so much their leader, Yuuri didn't think, but oftentimes he did seem to instigate the Gryffindors' games. His words carried across the outbursts and muffled them into quietness.

"Quit your gabbing, you lot!" he announced, though the reprimand was denied by his grin. "If you keep nattering on, it'll be dark before we even start!"

That was it. That was enough incentive. Glances drew sidelong. Smiles stretched across lips and eyebrows rose in leering anticipation. Then three voices sounded at once.

"Sixty seconds?"

"Disqualification for premature strikes?"

"Boundary at the Forbidden Forest and the lake as usual?"

There was no need for verbal agreement. The Gryffindors were good for that, too; if it had been Ravenclaws, a written manual would have almost been needed before the game could start. Yuuri liked consistency and ground rules, but in this instance he was glad to abandon them for promptness.

The battle erupted in a heartbeat. Phichit barked a short, "Sixty seconds starting!" as he threw a timed flare up in the air. As one, their party spun on their heel to flee and dove in opposite directions. Yuuri leapt down the hill in his own flight. Snow crunched beneath his feet, sinking him to mid-calf – and then not quite so deeply as the wind hooked beneath his arms and tugged him into its hold without his request. In moments, he was all but flying across the snow.

The fight was fierce. It always was. Close-range and vicious, because Gryffindors always strove for proximity and high-intensity, missiles were flung from the moment the sixty seconds passed. Yuuri was instinctively ducking as the countdown flare exploded into a crack of sparkling red fireworks.

A snowball sailed over his head. Another followed soon after, and then cries of indignation, of triumph, an outburst of laughter, all rippled through the air.

The game was away.

Yuuri lost himself in the mayhem. He scooped with gloved hands and launched a projectile at the back of Gideon's head. He ducked another missile flung his way, then missed the next that an unseen assailant launched towards him, spraying snow across his chest.

Echoes resounded across the hill. Cries of further protest and indignation, more laughter and outbursts of, "You arse, not in my face!" and "Ha, got you back, Kellie!" Yuuri ran and dodged, ducked to his knees to scoop hasty snowballs before letting them fly at the nearest opponent.

He found himself alongside Phichit for a moment, and they shared a grin before Phichit smashed a handful of crispy snow in his face.

He took a trip that crashed him into Janice, and they rolled several meters down the hill in a crazy, laughing mess. Seconds later and they were both upon their feet and fleeing one another.

The wind lifted Yuuri and danced around him in bubbling joy, and he embraced it in return. He regretted remaining behind closed doors for the past few days. For a moment, he could even forget just why he'd chosen to do so in the first place.

Cackles of merriment. Gasping breaths and pluming puffs of clouds from open mouths. Scuffing footsteps smearing the hillside, and more collisions than were necessary for a snowball fight. It was a battle of pure joy, of exhilaration, and Yuuri lost himself in it, forgetting the melancholy that had embraced him for days.

Until he took a skidding moment to pause and catch his breath.

Wind flooded his lungs with icy freshness. The glare of reflected snow had Yuuri to squinting despite the evening slowly darkening the school grounds. He caught a glimpse of his battle opponents – the Gryffindors, strewn about haphazardly and stumbling significantly more than they had been at first, and Phichit bent double with laughter alongside Terrence where he'd tripped and fallen onto his belly. Then he was backpedalling as Kellie caught sight of him and a grin drew across her face. She bent to rake together another snowball, and Yuuri was turning and stumbling in renewed flight and –

He froze. Not from the cold, and not for the snowball fight. He froze as though struck by a _Petriciuls totalis_ and for a beat he couldn't move. He could barely breathe, because there, down the hill and at the lake, he saw…

 _No_.

The single word, flooded with horror, echoed in his head. Yuuri felt his eyes widen, his throat seize, and _No, no, no_ , repeated frantically in his head. Down at the lake – they were down at the lake and _on_ the lake, and –

He was running before he knew what he was doing. Not laughing and fleeing a game. Not dodging to spin and retaliate with a lobbed snowball. Yuuri's heart had clambered into his throat and he was running down the snow-laden hill with all the speed the wind could carry him with. His feet crunched through only the top layer of snow, and he felt as though he really was flying.

Or detachedly. He detachedly knew he ran faster than he possibly could. Just as he detachedly heard Kellie call, "Yuuri, what –?" that was followed by the abrupt silencing of Phichit's laughter. Yuuri barely heard them, and he threw himself towards the Black Lake and the Durmstrang students that even then were skidding and clambering out onto the ice.

The wind wailed in sympathetic horror. Yuuri's breath scraped his throat as he gasped, panting for breath, and pelted for the shore. Not now. They couldn't, not now. If they could just slow down, just wait, just _stop_ –

"Stop!" Yuuri cried desperately, a hand reaching towards the lake, towards the Durmstrang students and the disaster looming and rolling towards them like a rumbling cloud. Magic tingled down his stretched fingers, and the wind snapped forth, throwing his words towards the lake.

He was so close. It wasn't far, and the distance was swallowed with each leaping stride Yuuri took. The wind, his call, dragged the attention of the slipping and sliding – the skating? – students, and gazes swung towards him.

So close. _So close_. Yuuri could hardly breathe for the speed of his flight, could hardly choke out a frantic, "Get off the ice!" before he heard it.

The crack was resounding.

A splinter. A fracture.

Popping ice, and the grumble of destruction. Yuuri heard it barely seconds from the edge of the lake, and the Durmstrang students clearly did to. Attention snapped towards their feet, and one of them uttered a warbling cry.

Anyone who had any knowledge of the winter's freezing grasp and had skated on public lakes knew what to look out for. Not too thin, with at least half a hand of thickness. Not too scarred, or ridged, or peppered with slush. Not too dark – because dark ice meant too thin – but not too pale either, because the imperfections that smeared the darkness were equally dangerous. Surely the Durmstrang students, being from the locale they haled from, would have known that. _Surely_.

But the Black Lake was deceptive. It did look thick enough, and dark enough, and smooth enough. That was the problem. Yuuri and every other student had been warned of the dangers of the lake, that the density of magical creatures within its depths disrupted natural ice formation. The now-sixth year Hamilton O'Rielly had served as a warning for just that risk in Yuuri's first year, triggering the subsequent warnings in proceeding years. Hamilton had been alright after he'd fallen through the ice, but word had it that he hadn't returned to the shores of the lake again in his schooling career.

Everyone at Hogwarts knew the risks, but clearly the Durmstrang students hadn't been properly warned.

There was the crack. The splinter. The fracture. And when the ice popped with the promise of decay, Yuuri's feet stumbled to a halt. He stopped – and he did the only thing he could.

Without even grasping his wand, Yuuri flung his arm towards the lake and begged the wind. _"Catch!"_

The wail of wind, or magic, or both snapped across the lake. It met the abruptly terrified cries of the Durmstrang students as the ice sagged beneath them. Terrified – and then startled as the wind snatched them from their feet like puppets on strings and dragged them into the safety of its clasp.

For a moment, time seemed to pause, suspended. Yuuri's breath had frozen in his lungs once more. The Durmstrang students' cries – all eight of them, Yuuri counted – died. The wind muted itself as it ceased its snake-like strike towards the victims of the lake.

There was another deafening crack. Another pop. The sound of something plopped like a stone into water.

Yuuri stared, and as he stared, he held a tenuous grasp upon the wind. _Don't let go,_ he silently begged. _Please don't let go._ There were familiar faces beneath thin hats and behind muffling scarves. Faces Yuuri knew, if not all of them by name, and they stared at the ice spreading, cracking, beneath their dangling legs.

 _Please don't let go…_

How long they remained in stasis, Yuuri didn't know. Seconds, perhaps, or minutes. Maybe longer – he wasn't sure. It was only when a voice spoke, the crisp vowels of foreign words trembling just slightly, that he was even able to stutter enough to gasp a breath.

That voice… Of course he knew it. Knew him. Just as he knew it had to be him who cast the magic to repair the tears in the ice.

Nikiforov swept his wand at the fractured ice spread beneath himself and his classmates. He spoke something, some spell, perhaps, or maybe just words. Yuuri's fingers trembles as he held them still outstretched, but he managed to shift his gaze from the invisible threads of the wind for long enough to see it. He saw the snow-magic, the shower of crystallised ice descending from Nikiforov as though he were a snow cloud unto itself. It settled like a veil draped across the floor, like a gossamer throw rug.

The ice ceased its popping and spitting. It crackled slightly, then a hiss oddly reminiscent of the wind's sigh gushed forth. Yuuri stared, as captivated as he was still terrified, and his pants still sounded in his ears, but…

The magic was beautiful. It always would be. White, and silver, and blue, and oh-so-delicate.

An indiscernible time later, Nikiforov flicked his wand from its trained focus. He raised his gaze, pinned Yuuri with a stare, and there was such solemnity to his expression that Yuuri hardly recognised him. Nikiforov was always smiling. He was smiling, or laughing, or mellow in contented bliss as he practiced his Snow Charming.

Not then, though. Not anymore. When he spoke, Nikiforov's voice was in a low intonation. "Would you be so kind as to be putting us down now?"

Yuuri flinched. He didn't know why, but as the suspension of the scene shattered, he felt something like terror zap through him. It was terror of a different kind, yet somehow just as fierce. A wash of memories, of pain and heartbreak, crashed over him, and he took a backwards step as he abruptly lowered his arm.

The wind, blessedly, didn't abide his sudden abandonment. The Durmstrang students tapped skated feet to the renewed and thickened ice like dancers upon the stage floor. As soon as they steadied themselves, Yuuri found himself with not only Nikiforov but every other pair of eyes turned towards him. Wide eyes, wary eyes, questioning and bright with something like fear.

A part of Yuuri knew that the fear wasn't directed at himself. That they were still shaken from the near disaster, and that it had been _so close_ that likely just how dangerous their plight had been was only just sinking in.

But another part, the old, nostalgic part that remembered every moment of bullying and sidelong glances, every questioning disbelief and derisive snort, saw it in a different light. He hated being the centre of attention, hated it fiercely, and when he was being looked at like _that_? It was… it was as though they saw…

"D-don't –" Yuuri attempted, and had to swallow past the quavering that wracked his words. "Don't go on the ice. You can't – the Black Lake is magical so you shouldn't…"

Pausing again, Yuuri took another step backwards as those unblinking eyes stared at him. His second swallow was as ineffective as his first. "Don't go on the ice," was all he could manage again.

Then he was turning. He was racing from the edge of the lake. Unbidden, the wind darted towards him, wrapped chilled fingers around his legs, beneath his jacket, and hitching him into its grasp. His feet barely touched the ground as he ran.

Yuuri fled the Black Lake, and the staring Durmstrang, and Nikiforov. Especially Nikiforov, who evoked such a confusing, aching mixture of feelings that Yuuri couldn't even begin to unravel them. He fled and barely heard the Gryffindors as he sped past them to the safety of the castle.

The Durmstrang students were safe. That was the most important thing. That was the _only_ important thing. Squeezing his eyes closed as he fled into the safety of the Entrance Hall, Yuuri only wished that he believed it as much as he tried to tell himself.


	5. Chapter 5 - A Question

**Chapter 5: A Question**

Leaning just barely around the doors into the Great Hall, Yuuri peered within. The sea of students that had flooded its depths was sparse that morning, with only the particularly earlier risers of the managing to haul themselves from their beds. Saturday morning typically found most making use of the extra hours of sleep.

Yuuri likely would have on any other day. Or on most other days. Not recently, however. In recent days, he'd had precious little ability to sleep in at all. Sleep was always elusive when his nerves highly strung.

His glance around the modest swell of students in attendance was comforting in the distinct lack of certain people. Yuuri sighed, shoulders slumping, at the absence of tell-tale red cloaks to disrupt the casual attire of Hogwarts' students. He straightened from his wary lean, took a step from his shelter of the doors, and –

"What are you doing?"

Yuuri squawked so embarrassingly loudly that his voice echoed throughout the Entrance Hall. He spun in place, nearly tripped, and slumped back against the door as the sudden wobbling in his knees betrayed him.

Minako had planted herself directly before him. Behind her stood Yuuri's sister Mari, and alongside Mari was Yuuko, and Takashi, and Phichit. They stared at him with solemn expressions, but clearly deemed Minako capable enough of spearheading the confrontation.

For a moment, Yuuri regretted that it was so early and there was no one to deflect what was surely going to be a firm reprimand from the frown severely slicing Minako's eyebrows. Not a single other person stood in the Entrance Hall to save him, if anyone would even go so far.

Yuuri doubted it. Minako was a force to be reckoned with in the seventh year Ravenclaw cohort.

He wasn't quite sure what he was to be chided for, but that he was going to be seemed inevitable. Minako's hands propped on her hips, she leant forwards into his space as though to pin him against the door. Her unwavering stare clearly said, "Tell me all your secrets or I'll drag them from you."

Yuuri fully believed she would. She'd done just that countless times before

After a beat, Minako prodded him with a word. "Well? What're you doing?

"N-nothing," Yuuri stammered, attempting a smile. He gestured vaguely over his shoulder. "Just, ah… breakfast?"

Minako's eyes narrowed. "You're sneaking into the Great Hall?"

"I'm not –"

"Just as you've been sneaking between classes for a whole week now?"

Yuuri winced. "I haven't been –"

"You're barely pausing in the common room," Minako said, speaking over him once more. "Phichit says you've hardly spoken a word to him all week, and Yuuko says you've been acting twitchy when you actually spare a moment for her and Takashi at all." Minako's glare could have frozen hot water. "What's going on, Yuuri?"

It was funny that, though Mari stood in their company, Minako was the one chiding Yuuri like an angrily concerned older sister. Or it would have been funny, except that Yuuri was more than used to it. Ever since he'd first begun ballet at the same studio as Minako, she seemed to have slotted herself into the position of pseudo-family member and, given Mari's close-lipped apathy to wards most things and complete avoidance of confrontation, she stepped up to the play.

Yuuri didn't begrudge it of her, just as he didn't begrudge her militaristic peppering of questions. Minako liked to know things – liked to know _every_ thing – and that included the worries and concerns of those she cared about. Yuuri had often thought himself blessed with her hard love; she showed it in an often brutal manner, but it was apparent nonetheless.

Except, at that moment, as usually happened when in the thick of being attacked, Yuuri didn't think very favourably towards the assault. He pressed himself back against the door, kicking himself for chancing a trip to the Great Hall that morning. He should have just gone straight to the kitchens; a benefit of being a friend of Hufflepuffs lay in knowing the best and only entrance into the house elf-riddled kitchen.

"I've been… busy," Yuuri mumbled half-heartedly.

Over Minako's shoulder, he saw Phichit purse his lips. Yuuko frowned, tucking her arms across her chest. Takashi muttered something beneath his breath, and even Mari's eyebrow twitched in disbelief. It was Minako, though, that commandeered his attention once more.

She grumbled something that sounded almost like a growl before sharply clicking her tongue. "That's the excuse you're going for?"

"I have been," Yuuri muttered, drawing his gaze sideways.

Minako leaned into his line of sight. "Busy how? What, with all of your other friends?"

Yuuri didn't flinch at her words. They weren't spoken cruelly, but simply to point out the obvious: that Yuuri didn't really have friends outside of those that stood before him, and that history suggested he wasn't likely to make any more in the near future. Still, he regretted that Minako had so forcibly thrust his excuse aside.

"I've been studying," he reattempted.

"Studying?"

"Yeah. Flitwick's been giving me some extra readings to start before Christmas, and it's really complicated work and has a whole heap of practical work thrown in that I'd really like to try while he's around to help, so I've been trying to get it done before…"

Yuuri trailed off again. He was babbling, _knew_ he was babbling, and his friends surely knew what that meant, too. They knew him far too well to be deceived by such bright and nattering deflection.

It wasn't that he spoke a lie, because Professor Flitwick _had_ given him extra material. Charms was Yuuri's best subject, and Flitwick responded to that innate skill, one of precious few Yuuri actually possessed. But that it was the whole truth? That it was the reason Yuuri had been ducking around corners and all but Apparating whenever he saw the flutter of a Durmstrang cloak?

No, that wasn't it. Not at all.

Minako clearly wasn't buying it either. She straightened, folding her arms across her chest, and peered down at Yuuri with a frown that abruptly grew less accusing and more concerned. "That's not it," she said.

Yuuri shrugged. "I do have extra work."

"But that's not all of it."

"I've got my homework too, so…"

Minako clicked her tongue once more. "Well," she said with a huff. "That won't be a problem anymore since school's let out for Christmas. Now, are you going to tell me the _real_ reason?"

Yuuri's shoulder's hunched and he felt almost as though he were sinking into the door for how closely he huddled against it. That was the problem, really; Minako had pointed it out only too bluntly. School was finished for the Christmas holidays, and now Yuuri didn't have any excuse for spending hours in the library, or tucked away studying in the Ravenclaw dormitories, or for hanging back after classes to speak to his teachers and ask questions he'd spent the whole class attempting to dredge up.

Sighing, Yuuri peered resignedly up at Minako. "You already know. Right?"

Minako's frown quivered. "I can suspect."

"You think I'm an idiot?"

"We always think you're a bit of an idiot, Yuuri," Mari said from behind her, though despite her words there was a touch of exasperated fondness to her tone.

Minako nodded. "I would have suspected it had something to do with the Durmstrangs even if Phichit hadn't mentioned you all but fleeing from them last week when you had that snowball fight outside. And that after running _towards_ them first, too." She shook her head. "Care to explain that to us what's going on? Why are you avoiding everyone? Why are you avoiding us?"

Yuuri didn't want to. He didn't want to explain at all, and the discomforting, almost painful tightness in his gut somehow seemed to have a confounding effect on his tongue, too. He almost couldn't have spoken, even had he wanted to.

The previous week, the Durmstrang students – Nikiforov and his friends – had nearly fallen prey to disaster. The story hadn't been kept silent, and Headmaster Dumbledore had made an announcement in the company of all students, Hogwarts and otherwise, that very night. "Stay off the ice," he'd said simply. "It would be such a regret to dampen the Christmas cheer with an accident on the lake."

Yuuri remembered that night vividly, if only because he'd all but sunken beneath the table in a sudden burst of terror. For a moment, he thought – he _knew_ – that Dumbledore would say something about him. That the Durmstrangs would have outed him, and that he would somehow get blamed for doing something wrong.

"You should have approached a professor directly after the incident," they would say or, "while it was a benefit to the students, using wandless magic upon another person is terribly dangerous and could have been a disaster in itself."

"You should have –" and "why didn't you -?" peppered Yuuri's thoughts from the moment Dumbledore mentioned the lake, and even knowing it was irrational, logically understanding that, if anything, he'd only helped the foreign students until Nikiforov could help them himself, he felt shaken with stark terror. Not only the scolding but…

Yuuri hated being at the centre of attention. He hated it with panicked fervour.

But Dumbledore hadn't said anything. He hadn't drawn attention to Yuuri, and after his warning, the students had been dismissed readily enough. Yuuri had all but fled the hall, and it was his desperate hope that the incident would be put behind him.

It seemed to have for the rest of the evening. Until he nearly ran into Nikiforov, that was.

It wasn't outside, because Yuuri stopped going outside again after that. The wind wailed its demanding complaint for his absence, but he placated it as much as he could be all but hanging out of every window he passed when he had the chance. But he didn't go outside. He couldn't. There were now two reasons to avoid the Durmstrangs, to avoid Nikiforov who'd seen what he'd done and could do, and Yuuri couldn't risk it no matter how much he wanted things to return to how they were.

It was in the Entrance Hall preceding breakfast the following day that Yuuri nearly ran into Nikiforov. In the company of but not really with the rest of the Ravenclaws in his year, Yuuri was watching his feet as he walked. Though aware enough to keep pace with his dorm mates, he was distracted by a thin breeze that had somehow trickled into the hallways and sought him out like an enthusiastic bloodhound. Descending the steps to the Entrance Hall, Yuuri and the rest of the Ravenclaws jerked to a halt when a voice rung out across the hall.

"Excuse me! Would I be able to be talking to you for a moment?"

The voice, accented and lilting, delightfully skewing the English words, was all too familiar. Yuuri snapped his gaze from his feet, caught sight of a cluster of students in Durmstrang red and a head of bright silver-grey hair –

And then he was spinning on his heel and running. Not the surprised call in what sounded like a foreign language nor his dorm mates', "what the –? Yuuri?" slowed him. Yuuri was fleeing up the stairs and down the nearest corridor, in no particular direction but away, before he'd rightly thought about just why he was running.

There was no specific why. Or, more correctly, Yuuri couldn't pin it to just one reason. Mostly, the embarrassment, the nervousness, the regret, and sadness, and heartache, drove him. Then there was the wariness, because he didn't _know_ the Durmstrangs, and he didn't _know_ how they would respond to what he'd done, the wandless magic and the magic _upon_ them.

The Snow Charming. The incident on the lake. Those coupled memories seemed good enough reason to run away from the feelings that accompanied them. It wasn't very rational of him, not very Ravenclaw, but Yuuri had never claimed to possess every characteristic of his house.

Yuuri was nearly confronted a handful of time, and by more Durmstrangs than just Nikiforov, before he decided before he decided to avoid the Great Hall entirely.

"You are the one who was -?" one boy began before Yuuri ducked away from him.

"Would perhaps, are you being able to -?" a girl attempted, and Yuuri nearly tripped over himself to escape.

He grew unconscious awareness for Durmstrang proximity as though he possessed a radar, and became quite adept at vacating any room, corridor, or vicinity they frequented. The need to simply 'avoid' had become so paramount that Yuuri wasn't even rightly sure why he persisted. Nothing much beyond the desperate need to escape the upwelling confusion of feelings – so much embarrassment, and awkwardness, and regret – drove him in his flight.

Plisetsky's unexpected confrontation was the tipping point. Walking with a cluster of other Ravenclaws in the direction of the common room after lunch, they'd nearly crashed into one another as Plisetsky was exiting a bathroom.

The kid was small. Skinny. So blond his hair was nearly white, and just as pale. Yet despite his size, he wore a scowl that could have chased away the dragons from the First Triwizard Task. He spun towards Yuuri as though his gaze was instinctively drawn, and his lip curled in an instant.

"You," he said, accent colouring the word and making it as sharp as the finger he jabbed towards him.

Yuuri hastened back a step. Then another. Plisetsky took one to follow. "What are you doing that is making Vitya so angered?"

Yuuri blinked. Vitya? That was… he didn't know much about Scandanavia, knew even less of the languages spoken there, but he was fairly sure that Vitya was Viktor. Mostly sure. But then, what did Yuuri have to do with Plisetsky's cousin, Viktor Krum? He'd never been within ten steps of him, let alone spoken to him. What did Krum have against Yuuri?"

"I don't –" he began, but his words were cut off but a squeal and a outburst of gasps. Yuuri spared a glance towards the trio of girls walking with his fractured Ravenclaw group and couldn't help but blink in surprise at the sudden display of grins and flushed cheeks.

"You're Yuri Plisetsky!" said Ana Frost, a third year, as she clapped a hand to her mouth.

Plisetsky spared her a narrow-eyed glare through his fringe. "Huh?"

"It is!" the other third year Helene Gomez said, and she squealed again with a flail of her hands. "He does look like one, doesn't he?"

Plisetsky frowned. "What -? What are you -?"

"Like a kitten!" the second year girl said, fawning as if over a real kitten itself despite definitely being younger than Plisetsky himself.

"He does, he seems like a little kitten!" Ana gushed.

"All hissing and indignant."

"So cute!"

Yuuri stared at the girls with blank astonishment. That… was utterly strange. Yuuri felt just as dumbstruck and could only stare himself. Who said such things about someone, and especially directly to their face? At one side of him, sixth year Jenni Cairns was regarding the girls with thinly veiled amusement and a maybe a little embarrassment. At his other, Tomas Birkhead appeared short of horrified, while alongside him, Otabek Altin was staring at Plisetsky with something bordering upon curiosity outside of his usual bland disinterest.

It was all more than a little confusing, more than a little unexpected, and almost cruel to Plisetsky, who looked as floundering and lost as Yuuri felt as his gaze snapped between the girls. But Yuuri wouldn't pass up the opportunity provided. Plisetsky wasn't peppering him with questions that sounded like demands as the other Durmstrang students did, but he was still a Durmstrang. He could still have some kind of grudge against Yuuri that Yuuri was feeling more and more certain was being directed his way with each passing day. Using the offered escape, Yuuri slunk from the scene and was scampering down the corridor before Plisetsky even realised he was gone.

The week had continued in just that manner until yesterday afternoon and the cessation of their classes for the year. Minako was right; now he didn't really have any excuses.

Raising his gaze from where they'd dropped to his feet, Yuuri met Minako's still-frowning gaze. He glanced briefly over her shoulder towards his sister and his friends regarding him with varying degrees of concern and contemplation.

Swallowing thickly, Yuuri felt his shoulders slump in defeat. "I'm sorry I've been avoiding you."

Minako nodded shortly. "So you should be."

"It's not got anything to do with… with anyone, really."

"But?"

"But…" He couldn't help himself. Yuuri lowered his gaze once more, as much in embarrassment for his own foolishness as for his disappointment: in himself, in the situation, and for the feelings he couldn't quite understand and weren't making sense of themselves. "The Durmstrangs – they kind of… scare me. Maybe. A little."

Yuuri couldn't see Minako's face with his chin tucked, but he heard when she sighed. He heard Yuuko's slight murmur, something unintelligible that she quickly smothered, and Mari's hum as though she thought it explained something.

Then Minako was dropping a hand to his shoulder and he couldn't help but glance up at her. She regarded him with a hint of exasperation but more fond understanding than he truly deserved. He _had_ been sort of avoiding them of late. He'd been avoiding everyone. Her understanding hurt just a little, even as it soothed like a balm, because yes, Yuuri was a little scared of the Durmstrangs, but not for the reasons that would be suspected. Not for the Durmstrangs themselves. It felt like a lie, and Yuuri hated that he'd told it even as he knew he wouldn't retract the words.

"There's no reason to be scared of them," Minako said slowly. "Even though most of them wear a butch and burly attitude like a second skin."

 _Not all of them_ , Yuuri thought, before thrusting the memory of Nikiforov out of his head.

"But even if you are scared, that doesn't mean you can just avoid us like this. Ask for help next time, Yuuri."

"Yeah," Phichit said, piping up into the discussion that Yuuri had suspected his friends felt too subdued to partake in. Minako was like that in her demanding bluntness. She tended to override everyone else. "We'll shield you from them."

"I…" _I don't need shielding_ , Yuuri thought, but he couldn't get the words out.

Yuuko smiled with more brightness than the situation warranted. "They're not so intimidating when there's a whole lot of us to confront, yes?"

Mari shuffled to Yuuri's side, planting herself against the door next to him and butting her shoulder into his. Her usual hooded stare hadn't lifted, but that gesture in itself meant more than a smile or a frown. "You're supposed to tell me these things, Yuuri. What would _otou-san_ and _okaa-san_ say if they found out?"

Nothing. They'd likely say very little, in actuality, because Yuuri's parents didn't really scold him, and they'd long ago expected little emotional response from Mari. It was just the way she was. But Yuuri understood the sentiment behind her words nonetheless and leant gently against her shoulder in return.

Phichit was smiling encouragingly, and Yuuko just as much. Takashi was nodding in sage agreement, and Minako stared at Yuuri like she was daring him to object to their words. Yuuri offered a small smile that felt so inadequate for their gestures of comforting and consoling words. His friends really were the best. He might not have all that many, but those he did have – they were definitely the best.

"You need a pick-me-up," Minako said abruptly, squeezing his shoulders slightly. "Yes, I think that's what you need." She glanced over her shoulder towards Yuuri's friends. "Oi, Yuuko. Where does Sprout usually host the dancing lessons?"

Yuuko caught on immediately and her smile widened until she was beaming. "Oh, I can you show you if you'd like."

"Are we going dancing?" Takashi asked.

Phichit was at Yuuri's other side in an instant, an arm slinging around his shoulders. He jostled Yuuri slightly before dragging himself away from door. "That sounds like a great idea. What do you say, Yuuri?"

Yuuri spared another glance for the Great Hall, the warm scents of breakfast wafting from within. "But didn't you guys want to get breakfast?"

"Later," Mari said with a bored shrug.

"It's Saturday morning," Yuuko said, slipping into the non-existent gap between Yuuri and his sister and linking their arms. "There's time enough."

"Why don't I drop past the house elves in the kitchen and pick something up?" Takashi suggested.

His offer was met with hums of gratitude and approval, and then Yuuri found himself in the midst of friends and family as they thrust his half-true confession to the side and clattered as a group towards the pseudo-dancing studio Sprout had been using for the past weeks.

Yuuri was nothing if not melancholic of late, but when he was with them, and when they were around him and supporting him… With Phichit squeezing his shoulders in his one-armed embrace, Mari wandering at his side and Yuuko chattering animatedly while Minako led with firm steps as though on a battle-charge, Yuuri felt some of that melancholy leave him.

The Durmstrangs weren't scary. Not really. It was more correctly the feelings that arose within Yuuri at the thought of them – or of one particular Durmstrang – that invoked fear. Nikiforov, and the thought of irrational jealousy, and the embarrassment and regret and confusion that surrounded his wandless, instinctive wind magic at the lake that somehow seemed 'wrong'. But in the midst of Yuuri's friends, when they started dancing, and laughing, and Takashi brought scones, jam, and somehow even a jug of pumpkin juice, that fear was easy enough to forget.

For a time.

* * *

On Sunday, however, Yuuri understood what true fear was. Not just a fear of feelings, either; what rose within him as he wandered towards the Great Hall for dinner that evening wasn't that kind of fear. It was blatant terror of the young man who appeared in the doorway as though he'd heard him coming.

The clamour from the Great Hall echoed out into the Entrance Hall, trailing up the steps and filtering down corridors. Yuuri, returning from the Astronomy Tower where he'd taken himself – alone, because even if he loved his friends, and even if they understood him, it was better to talk to the wind alone – had his mind decidedly elsewhere as he descended the last of those stairs and turned towards the Great Hall.

Yuuri backpedalled as he nearly collided into someone. The words "I'm sorry!" were out of his mouth before he even fully dragged his attention back from where it still pondered in the Astronomy Tower.

Nikiforov was faster to react. He started, turning towards Yuuri. Then his eyes widened, and the smile that Yuuri had only seen from afar, a smile that bespoke the wonder of seeing his own Snow Charming pouncing playfully before him, spread across his lips.

"Ah! You are Katsuki Yuuri, yes?"

There were so many parts of that simple phrase that rocked Yuuri where he stood. That Nikiforov was addressing Yuuri directly. That he somehow _knew his name_. More than that, that he'd addressed him properly rather than in a Westernised manner. Nikiforov smiled, brightly and widely, spoke Yuuri's name, and stepped towards him with eager confidence.

Naturally, Yuuri ran. He ran like the hounds of hell where chasing on his heels.

Safety was a feeling he often gleaned from immersion in the wind. It was likely that reason more than anything that, when Yuuri threw himself into flight at the feeling of stark terror – of Nikiforov, and what he meant, and the feelings that would _definitely_ arise because of him – he burst through the front doors of the castle and leapt into the evening-swathed grounds.

It was cold. Snow fell in a barely perceivable shower, but the crispness of winter had fully sunken its teeth in. Coupled with the joyful embrace the wind wrapped him in as soon as he stumbled down the steps, Yuuri was all but frozen in seconds.

Not that it slowed him. The embrace of that wind sensed his urgency, adding speed to his flight as he darted across the courtyard and down the snow-laden path from the castle. He didn't know where he was going, registered detachedly that it was foolish of him to be running outside at night _,_ and that it could even be dangerous –

But when his nerves overwhelmed him, Yuuri rarely had a say in the matter of his own response.

 _Away?_ the wind asked, a whisper in his ear.

 _Fast, flight, fly –_

 _\- down, out, dive into cold -_

 _\- fleeing, we fly -_

Yuuri fell to the suggestions posed and let the wind carry him even through the snow as it dragged at his shoes. He didn't glance over his shoulder to discern if Nikiforov had followed him as far as the castle doors. He didn't slow long enough for that.

It was when he skidded and nearly stumbled at the lakeside, the lake itself a pale expanse of frozen ice that should by all rights be frozen more solidly than it had been the previous week, that Yuuri tripped to a halt. He was gasping, frozen air chilling his lungs and gushing forth in an opaque cloud, and he bent double to heave in a mixture of flighty fear and sudden exhaustion.

It was… It had been… Bumping into the one person that Yuuri didn't want to see as much as he very much longed to left him shaken. A part of him knew he was being utterly dramatic, foolish, and maybe just a little crazy, but he couldn't help himself. Yuuri had never claimed to be brave. Or smart, despite his sorting. And he certainly not confident.

Dropping onto his haunches, Yuuri stared through the thickening darkness at his toes, catching his breath. A moment later and he was rocking backwards to slump heavily upon the icy clump of snow at his back.

 _Stupid,_ he thought to himself. _I'm so stupid. How am I going to avoid every single Durmstrang until the end of the Triwizard Tournament?_ It seemed an impossible task, even as Yuuri knew he would pursue it to within an inch of his sanity. Not brave, nor smart, nor confident, maybe, but Yuuri knew he was stubborn. It was something of a double-edged sword he'd possessed his whole life.

Closing his eyes, he took a ragged breath and released it into a swirling plume of white on darkness above him. Wind picked at the warmth, dispersing it instantly, before reaching tendrils of fingers to stroke and prod at his face.

 _Sad? Is sad? Why -?_

 _\- fix, will be fixed, cold, sharp, snap -_

 _\- Wrong? Bad? Sad?_

"Sorry," Yuuri mumbled, because the wind might not be sentient like most people considered, but it still somehow cared. He felt a touch of guilt for having it worry over him. "I'm alright."

 _Sad, is sad, cold, quiet –_

"Not sad, just… stupid."

 _Better? Wind, cold, sharp, bite, snap –_

"I don't need you to snap at anything. It's fine, I'm just…" _Stupid_.

 _Cold, falling, sharp, snow, puppy –_

Yuuri blinked. "Puppy?"

"Not today, I do not think," a voice said from behind him between sharp breaths. "Though if you would like, I could be showing you?"

Yuuri twisted in his seat so fast he nearly fell and face-planted on the snowy groundcover. On hands and knees, he watched as Nikiforov, wrapped in his heavy coat and scarf and huffing white breaths of his own, crossed the last of the distance between them.

"Y-you –" Yuuri began, sitting back on his knees. "Why -? How did you -?"

Nikiforov waved a hand over his shoulder in a vague gesture. "I was being told by the snow which way you have come."

"Told… by the snow?"

"Yes. Much like you were telling – no, talking to the wind, yes?"

Yuuri blinked up at him as Nikiforov stopped barely a pace away from him. He'd said… He'd just said… "How do you know about that?" he asked incredulously. "How did you -?"

"I saw you," Nikiforov said, dropping down to a crouch before Yuuri. "Was it… the second day we have arrived at Hogwarts? Outside, you were talking to the wind, yes?"

Nikiforov smiled brightly, so bright he seemed to chase away the night's darkness. Yuuri could only stare at him. He'd been seen? Nikiforov had seen him talking to the wind and…

 _That long ago? He saw me_ months _ago?_ The thought was as astounding as it was faintly horrifying. And confusing. Very confusing. Almost as confusing as the fact that Nikiforov somehow knew his name.

"What…?" Yuuri attempted, and he didn't even know what he'd intended to ask.

Nikiforov cocked his head, silver-grey fringe flopping across his forehead, and blinked at Yuuri expectantly. He paused, awaiting continuation, before speaking into the silence. "I have been wanting to talk with you for some time."

"You have –?"

"Is that alright? To perhaps ask of you a question?"

Yuuri swallowed thickly. He couldn't believe he was actually talking to Nikiforov. Or, more correctly, attempting to talk while Nikiforov peered at him like he was a curious Niffler seated atop an equally curious plot of trinkets. But Nikiforov was squatted before him, watching him attentively, and regardless of how Yuuri might struggle to shake his disbelief aside, the moment didn't fade away like a wistful dream.

"A question…" he managed. He met Nikiforov's gaze and blinked at the bright animation within. How they could look so bright, even through the rapidly draping curtain of night, Yuuri didn't know. He swallowed again. "If this is about the – the lake, I didn't mean to –"

"Lake?" Nikiforov frowned. Then his expression cleared in understanding. "Ah, with the ice? Yes, yes, that was very bad."

"I'm sorry," Yuuri said, cringing.

"Sorry? Why you are sorry?"

"I… Because?"

Yuuri didn't know why he apologised. He didn't even rightly know what he'd done wrong that day beside the lake. Only the memory of solemn stares and watchful silence as the Durmstrangs regained their footing moments before Yuuri had fled gave him any indication that he'd certainly done _something_ wrong.

But Nikiforov was shaking his head. "You apologise, but it is for no reason. You saved us, yes? From our… stupid."

Yuuri blinked. _From our stupid?_ Nikiforov's words weren't quite clicking into place and reasonable understanding in his mind. "Your stupid?"

Nikiforov nodded firmly. He pursed his lips, frowning, but it seemed less directed at Yuuri than towards himself. "The lakes around our school – they have no merpeople. Mr Dumbledore, he explained to Karkaroff that the merpeople magic, it effects the water. No?"

Yuuri shrugged slightly. He didn't know _why_ the lake was special, only that it was.

Nikiforov nodded as though Yuuri had agreed with him. Then he beamed. "Our stupid was dangerous, yes, but you saved us. We have been wanting to thank you for some time."

The words took a moment to register in Yuuri's ears, and not because the wind was whispering within them thickly enough to chill his lobes and freeze them almost to painfulness. "What?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"You're thanking me?"

Nikiforov cocked his head, brow crinkling. "Am I saying something not right? I know English only a little well, but I did not think –"

"No!" Yuuri blurted out. He raised his hands, waving them at Nikiforov in wild placation. "No, no, no, it's not wrong! Not at all! Sorry, Nikiforov, I'm just – I was confused, and…"

Nikiforov's confusion was swept aside to make way for another blindingly bright smile. "You are knowing of my name?"

Yuuri stuttered to a halt. "I – what?"

Nikiforov's teeth flashed whitely. "Victor is just fine, if you would like. Nikiforov is too much of my father. It feels old, yes?"

"You're… what?"

"Was that the wrong words too?" Nikiforov pursed his lips again. "Perhaps I am being out of practice and am not saying this right, but –"

"No." Yuuri waved a hand once more. "No, you're fine, you're – I'm just a little…"

Overwhelmed. Surprised. Rocked on his foundations because he couldn't quite keep up with the direction the unexpected conversation had taken. That Yuuri was even _having_ a conversation with Nikiforov – with _Victor_ – was mind-blowing. That it was in the grounds, at night, in the chilling cold, and with the dampness of snow rapidly seeping through the knees of Yuuri's trousers, was even more astounding.

He understood Nikiforov. Or Victor, or however he was called. He understood him perfectly well, even if he didn't quite comprehend it. Gratitude might be expected from so 'saving' someone, but Yuuri had admittedly planted himself firmly in the realm of having done something wrong. The instinctive unobtrusiveness, the urge to slink out of the spotlight and even from vaguely attending eyes, made any potential attentiveness become labelled as immediately Bad. That he'd done something Wrong.

But Niki – no, _Victor_ had said…

"I'm just a little surprised, is all," Yuuri said, struggling for an explanation that wouldn't have him seem like a crazy person. "I didn't expect you to thank me. Or to talk to me. Or to know my name, or anything else, because you're a Durmstrang, and you're older than me, and I've never really been very good at talking to strangers even when I'm not the one to start the conversation, and it was so surprising that I didn't – I don't –"

Yuuri stuttered to a halt again, all too aware that he was blabbering and likely too fast for Victor to understand him.

But Victor was only staring down at him with open curiosity and just the hint of a smile upon his lips. "You are being surprised?" he asked, summarising Yuuri's outburst with far more succinctness that Yuuri could have managed in his nervousness.

Yuuri's mouth opened. Then it closed. When he opened it again, he said the only thing he could think of, the only words that came to his mind, in an attempt to deflect the mortifying attention from himself. "Did you say you had a question?" he asked. "Can I, um… can I help you with something? Did you needed a hand with something?"

Victor blinked in silent blankness for a moment before recollection flooded his face with another wide smile. "Ah, yes! I have been wanting to ask you for some time, see?" Dropping his hands to his knees, he shuffled forward on his toes slightly, leaning towards Yuuri so that, even with night smothering them, Yuuri could discern the sharp lines of his features perfectly. "Would you be perhaps interested in coming to this Yuletide Ball with me?"

Yuuri stared at him. He heard Victor's words, but for a moment they didn't make sense. His gaze flickered briefly to Victor's lips, then to meet his eyes. His mouth opened to speak but he couldn't seem to find his tongue.

Somehow, however, a slightly strangled, "what?" made its way from his lips.

Victor propped an elbow on his knee, dropping his chin into an upraised hand. He hummed contentedly as he repeated simply, "Come to the Ball with me?"

Yuuri hadn't heard incorrectly. It was crazy, unimaginable even, but he hadn't misheard. And Victor's words weren't what he'd been expecting. Not in the least.

Yuuri had never been so utterly terrified yet flooded with euphoric, wondrous excitement in his entire life.


	6. Chapter 6 - A Daze

A/N: I am so, so sorry for the late update! I can't even believe how long it's been. Real life has been crazy, but I'll try really, really hard to update the next chapter a little more quickly. Thanks for sticking by me and enjoy the chapter!

* * *

 **Chapter 6: A Daze  
**

With slightly shaking hands, Yuuri ran his fingers over his hair once more. He was nervous. So nervous, and for once it was a different kind of nervous. It was different because Yuuri had never been in such a situation before. He'd never wanted to impress someone so badly.

Dancing was different. It was as much for himself as for those who watched him. But this? Dancing before someone he wanted – _needed_ – to impress? This was…

Terrifying.

Taking a slow breath as shaky as his hands, Yuuri peered at his reflection. The charm upon his eyes that he used to replace his glasses when dancing was firmly affixed, but for some reason his vision seemed a little blurry on the edges. His gaze darted to his fringe, and he tucked it neatly back beneath the weight of the potion that made it, for once, sleek and orderly. He ran a hand down the front of his dress robes, picking at the invisible lint on the blue lapels of a slightly paler shade than the rest of it. It didn't help. The whole smoothing routine didn't ease him one bit, no more than it usually did before a performance.

The click of the bathroom door announced the entrance of one of Yuuri's dorm mates, and he immediately turned from the mirror to duck out of the way for them to enter. Rory was chatting to someone – likely Peter – over his shoulder, and barely spared Yuuri a moment of his attention but to say, "Oh, you're still here? I thought you'd have gone down by now."

Yuuri ducked his head as he skirted around him. "Sorry. I'm just leaving."

"What?" Rory paused where he'd turned to the mirror to pluck at his own hair. He spared Yuuri a glance in the mirror's reflection. "I wasn't nagging or anything. You've just seemed ready for ages. It only starts at six, right?"

Yuuri nodded, both in confirmation and recognition of the obvious. He _had_ been ready for ages, had been preparing himself all afternoon in a shiver of excitement and more nervousness than he knew what to do with. How nerves seemed to disfigure the hours, one moment make making them drag and the next, chewing and swallowing them in seconds, he didn't know. Six o'clock was upon him both too slowly and far too quickly.

Before he knew it and before he really considered himself prepared, Yuuri was turning from the bathroom to start towards the Yule Ball.

Reagan was stomping into his shoes when Yuuri passed, and Monty lay sprawled on his back upon his bed, reading a heavy tome that he somehow managed to heft directly above his face. Yuuri paused only briefly alongside his bed. "You aren't coming?" he asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Monty grunted. "Why would I want to go?"

"It could be… fun." Fun. Would it be? Maybe it Yuuri could actually manage to swallow the bile welling in the back of his throat and stifle the incessant roiling of his belly. Merlin, he _wanted_ it to be fun.

Monty drew his attention briefly from his book to peer at Yuuri sidelong. He scrunched his nose. "I don't like balls. Or dancing."

"You don't have to dance," Yuuri muttered, even if the thought of not doing so was like a physical ache to him. Dancing was one of the main drawcards for attending that night, besides the far more obvious.

"I don't like crowds. They scare me."

"You've never claimed to be encholophobic before."

Monty grunted again. "Well, the Beauxbatons are too prissy and the Durmstrangs too stoic and bland. That's reason enough."

Yuuri pursed his lips. Monty's assumption was just plain wrong. He couldn't be blamed for it as he likely simply didn't know any better, but… Yuuri didn't know the Beauxbatons that well, but the Durmstrangs? Stoic and bland? Certainly not. Or at least not one in particular.

"Maybe you just haven't talked to the right ones," he said quietly, plucking on the corner post of Monty's bed.

"Is this your defence of the Durmstrangs again, Yuuri?" Reagan asked, straightening from his bed and propping his hands on his hips. He flashed Yuuri a grin. "Are you turning traitor to your school?"

Before Yuuri could even open his mouth to reply, Rory stuck his head out of the bathroom. "Durmstrang-philia, it is. It's afflicted a whole lot of Hogwarts students, or so I've seen."

"It's the exoticness," Reagan said, raising his chin and posturing in a manner that looked far more impressive in his dress robes than it did most of the time he struck such a pose – which he did more than Yuuri cared to attend to.

"The accents, maybe?" Rory suggested.

"Probably. Shame they're all older than us, though."

"Except for Krum's little cousin – what's-his-name? Plisetsky? And Delacour's sister."

"Are you cradle snatching, Reagan?"

"Hey, at least I didn't actually try to ask the little Delacour to the ball."

Yuuri didn't bother attempting to interrupt further as Reagan and Rory began a verbal debate of the likes of those that so often erupted between them. He would rather not draw attention to his own circumstances, a topic of which had provoked a number of particularly uncomfortable questions over the past few days.

"Yuuri, I heard you got asked to the ball," they'd said. "By a _Durmstrang_."

And: "It doesn't matter how I know, I'm just confirming. Is it true?"

And: "No way! _How_? Which one is it?"

"An older bloke? I never would have thought it of you, Yuuri."

"I didn't even know you talked to the Durmstrangs. Why didn't you tell me? You could have gotten me a date other than Jenny – not that there's anything wrong with Jenny, but she doesn't really like me that way or anything, so…"

And that was just Rory and Reagan. Monty didn't care, didn't ask questions, but just about everyone else seemed to. Yuuri was avoiding the corridors almost as much as he had been before Victor had asked him to the ball.

Victor had – he'd really asked him.

Days later, and Yuuri was still reeling in a state of shock from the situation he'd found himself in. To think that Victor would… that he would want to, with Yuuri…

Swallowing down the renewed bout of nervousness that welled within him and lathered his tongue with a bitter tang, Yuuri turned from the dormitory. He could wait to descend to the Entrance Hall with Rory and Reagan, but they were both attending with Ravenclaw girls from their year. Besides, the possibility of being dragged into a discussion involving too many intrusive questions wasn't something Yuuri wanted to tempt fate with.

The common room was alive with richly dressed senior students, flowing dress robes, coifed hair, and more bubbles of excited laughter than had likely ever infected the room but for on the final day of the school year. Yuuri slipped silently down the stairs, weaving through bodies in the process of similarly scurrying towards the Entrance Hall or hanging off friends' arms while in the throughs of enthusiastic exclamations. He almost made it to the door when the heavy weight of an arm hooked around his neck.

It was no surprise who it was. Not at all.

In seconds, Yuuri found himself dragged from the common room and into the echoing corridor just outside the door. A resounding echo of laughter rippled from down the hall, and a pair of brightly dressed girls hastened past him as the tower door swung closed behind them, but he barely had the time to notice them. Minako was all but wedged him against the wall alongside the door before he'd properly found his feet.

She was resplendent. When Minako made the effort, she could rival the most extravagantly dressed girls of Hogwarts and leave countless others in her dust. Dressed in pale pink, her hair drawn artfully back from her face, she would likely turn more than a few heads that evening.

If she stopped frowning, that was. Yuuri wasn't sure she could manage, and she wasn't making a good start in any attempts.

Pinned by her gaze as much as her hands upon his shoulders, Yuuri allowed Minako to run a critical eye over him. She hummed, clicked her tongue, and leant back just slightly. "You used that potion I gave you?" she asked.

Yuuri raised a hand self-consciously to his hair once more. " _Un_."

"And the ironing charm for your robes?"

"Minako, I don't need to –"

"Have you?"

Sighing, Yuuri nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

Minako's frown eased slightly, as though fighting her brewing satisfaction for the term of address. She straightened further, finally dropping her hands from his shoulders, and folded her arms instead across her chest. He could almost see the disgruntled tapping of her shoe beneath the hem of her robes. "Alright, then. One more thing."

Yuuri cringed. "Minako, I don't need to –"

"Yuuri, don't argue."

"We've been through this so many times –"

"I _said_ , don't argue."

"Can we just go down to the ball?"

Minako clipped the side of his head, not hard enough to hurt but enough to stifle his words. "Yuuri, you know I don't approve of this Nikiforov fellow. I don't know him, so I have to set precautions."

"You don't need to know him," Yuuri said with a sigh. "I do."

"Barely, and only for the past few days."

"That's enough to –"

"Yuuri." Minako cut him off, holding up a hand. "I said don't argue. Just do it, or I'm going to stick to your side like a leech all night to make sure you don't do anything stupid."

"You'd get bored just sticking with me."

"Exactly. And I wouldn't let you forget it."

"Can we just -?"

"Yuuri."

Sighing again, Yuuri bit back his agitation. He wanted to go to the Yule Ball, to descend to the Entrance Hall and meet Victor – to meet him, to actually _meet_ him – about as much as he was so twitchy in his nervousness that he wanted to turn tail and flee to the nearest window. A refreshing burst of winter wind, a slap in the face to clear his head, would be much welcome at that moment.

But Minako was fulfilling her role as a pseudo-older sister, even as it was largely unneeded because for once Mari had stepped up and spoken.

"Is he a weirdo?" she'd asked when Yuuri's not-so-secret date had been revealed.

"He is _not_ ," Yuuri all but yelped in reply.

"You sure about that? Do I need to take him out?"

"No!"

"I don't know, Yuuri," Yuuko had said right on Mari's tail. "Didn't you say the Durmstrangs scared you?"

"I – I did, but that wasn't –"

"He was one of the ones who followed you up from the lake two weeks ago, wasn't he?" Phichit had added, throwing in his two cents. "He didn't pressure you into going with him, did he?"

Yuuri glanced towards him, half indignant and half surprised, because Victor had followed him? How hadn't he known that? "Of course not, he –"

"I could have a chat to him," Takashi had said, speaking more to Yuuri's friends than Yuuri himself. Takashi wasn't an aggressive person, was certainly less so than Minako in her overprotectiveness, but he'd certainly looked it as he'd folded his beefy arms across his chest. "I could let him know the ground rules."

Yuuri hadn't quite known what to make of the situation, and days later he still didn't. His friends and family had always been protective and supportive of him, when he'd been bullied, or struggling with bouts of debilitating nervousness for a dancing competition. But this was unexpected. He'd never needed protecting from someone he wanted to be with before.

It was so confusing and unexpected that Yuuri let it lie. Or he attempted to – until Minako planted herself before him and demanded as she did.

Sighing, Yuuri made to speak in dutiful reply before pausing as the Ravenclaw Tower door swung open once more. A quartet of sixth years, dressed to the nines and all but bouncing with excitement, didn't even spare Yuuri and Minako a glance as they hastened down the corridor. The echoes of their laughter and enthusiasm hadn't wholly faded when Minako prodded him into response once more.

"I'm to keep my head and not play to his whims," Yuuri intoned as he'd been told to countless times over the past few days. It felt no less ridiculous this time than it had on previous instances. "And if I don't like something he says or does, I'm to tell him straight off and walk away. If I feel uncomfortable or threatened in any way… Minako, this is stupid."

"It's not," Minako said bluntly, folding her arms once more. "Continue."

"But I'm –"

"Continue."

"Victor isn't going to do anything –"

"Don't argue, Yuuri. I'd like to go to the ball tonight, and your mulish persistence in deflecting isn't making my job any easier."

Yuuri just managed to swallow the obvious words – that Minako didn't have to drill him, just as she didn't have to pose as his bodyguard – because even through his embarrassment and nervousness he could appreciate the sentiment. Minako had always had a blunt and almost aggressive manner of presenting her affection and protectiveness.

Sighing, he continued. "If I feel uncomfortable or threatened in any way, I'm to come straight to you, or Yuuko, or Takashi, even though that's definitely not going to happen."

Minako hummed, frowning. "It's that attitude that has me worried."

"You shouldn't be."

"Well, I am. Denial allows for such possibilities. Keep your eyes and ears open, and I'll do the same."

Yuuri didn't argue this time. He didn't state how it wasn't really Minako's job to care for him, or that he knew it would be unnecessary. Instead, he let her grab his hand once more and all but drag him away from the common room, long strides all but demanding that he trot to keep up with her.

The Entrance Hall was flooded with students and brightness, radiating noise as much as it did golden light from three hallways away. Yuuri's heartbeat stuttered with upwelling nerves once more, and he didn't even attempt to stifle it.

There were students, all older than third year, spread in a rainbow of colours. There were professors, Hogwarts and otherwise, sweeping through their midst and similarly dressed for the evening. The roiling mass of bodies rippled like a school of fish, churning over itself, and Yuuri could barely make out one body from the next any more than he could distinguish individual voices. He clung tightly to Minako's hand.

"Don't freak out," Minako murmured at his side, almost too quietly to be heard over the babble half a stairwell below them.

"I'm…"

"You're doing the unicorn-in-the-headlights impression," she said, leaning towards him to pin him with a stare and pointedly raised eyebrows. "Calm down."

 _Because being told to calm down has always worked in the past,_ Yuuri thought, but he swallowed the urge to blurt it out. Instead, he only nodded and did his best to descend the steps without falling on his face.

Only to have what little calm he still had spirited away from him with a single outburst. "Yuuri!"

How he managed to call loudly enough to be heard over so many, Yuuri didn't know. Or maybe it was simply that Yuuri had developed an ear for his voice. They'd barely shared one another's company since Victor had asked him to the ball so unexpectedly and unbelievably, but Yuuri still thought he would be able to pick his voice out from a thousand others.

He swung his attention towards the sound of Victor's voice, and his breath caught as he made him out from the sea of students. Victor was… He was always beautiful, and elegant, and eye-catching in a way that Yuuri didn't often appreciate, but the flowing purple robes made him even more so. Everything, from the style of his hair that wasn't wholly different to usual but somehow also was, to his smile, similarly different but glowingly familiar, made him seem the centre of the room.

Yuuri barely heard Minako murmur at his side. It could have been encouragement, or a warning, or a reminder. He didn't know. He only felt the slight nudge of her knuckle in his back, only heard her final, "I'll see you inside", and then he was all but tumbling down the stairs towards where Victor had planted himself at the bottom.

It was too loud to really talk, but Yuuri didn't mind. He wouldn't have been able to say much anyway, what with his heart in his throat and his stomach clenching so tightly he felt almost sick for it. He did stare, though. He stared up at Victor's bright-eyed gaze, his beaming smile, and when Victor held out a hand for him, he took it readily.

The kiss Victor planted on his fingers wasn't expected. Not at all. Yuuri was glad for the noise in the Entrance Hall in that moment, because it mostly covered up the startled cheep he couldn't quite withhold.

The slight twitch to Victor's smile as he straightened suggested he'd heard it nonetheless. Yuuri didn't know if he should be mortified or not, because it was a glorious smile.

"You look very nice," Victor said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the clamour surrounding them.

It was such a simple statement, but Yuuri felt himself flush to his fingertips. And smile, for that matter. The smile rose of its own accord. "Th-thank you," he stammered. "So do you."

How Victor managed so many different smiles, all as wide and beautiful as each other, Yuuri didn't know. But as he beamed at Yuuri once more, squeezing his hand, Yuuri decided he wanted to see them. He wanted to see them all.

* * *

 _"I did not think you were scared of me. Were you?_

 _"N-no! I mean… I was just confused, is all."_

 _"Really? Then my English is really so bad?"_

 _"No! No, no, no, not at all, it's just that… that… You're making fun of me, aren't you?"_

 _"Maybe a little. But I hope I do not seem rude."_

 _"No… No, it's not rude. I don't mind."_

 _"Then why have your cheeks become so red?"_

 _"I-I get embarrassed easily. It's a curse."_

 _"It is very cute."_

 _"You'll make me blush even more."_

 _"That is good, then. You are very cute when you do."_

 _Victor's smile was entirely genuine, and though he had admitted to teasing Yuuri, it didn't feel cruel. If anything, Yuuri felt his cheeks brighten further. It didn't have anything to do with his awkwardness or embarrassment – or it did, but of a different sort._

 _The Yule Ball was an event that Yuuri had accepted would come and pass without all that much involvement on his part. He hadn't anticipated it would ever be one of the best nights of his life._

* * *

The Great Hall was glorious.

Frost painted the walls in silver filigree. Garlands of mistletoe and ivy curled in every corner, draped in tufts of snow and dripping with icicles. The starry sky overhead seemed somehow darker than usual, those stars somehow brighter, and beneath its bottomless expanse, the hall was spread in a display unlike any Yuuri had ever seen before.

The house tables were gone, replaced by countless smaller ones ringed by at least a dozen chairs each. Lanterns were spread throughout, adding a glowing aura to the scene that mingled with the ambient white light Yuuri couldn't pinpoint the source of. Where usually sat the professor's raised upon its dais instead stretched instead a long table of seated champions and Triwizard staff alongside the headmasters and mistress of the three schools. The champions looked a little out of place, Yuuri thought, but it was somehow grand nonetheless.

Or he would have thought so had he much concern for the champions at all.

The table Yuuri found himself at was flooded with familiar faces as soon as he and Victor entered the room and sought seats for themselves. Minako and Mari sat alongside one another, because Minako had apparently forfeited a date when "that Durmstrang boy already had one", whoever the boy had been. Yuuko, pretty in violet, and Takashi, dressed to match, had planted themselves at Yuuri's side, while Phichit, with a pretty Gryffindor girl Yuuri knew only as Bee, had assumed their own seats a little further around the table. The rest of table was cluttered with Durmstrangs in an array of dress robes in variable colours and cuts, and the sounds of foreign words animated the table from as soon as they sat down. It was far from private, and yet…

Phichit beamed at Yuuri from around Yuuko's shoulder, offering him a thumb's up when Yuuri caught his eye.

Yuuko raised a questioning eyebrow, locked Yuuri in conversation for all of a minute, before Takashi distracted her. Minako was pinning the boy at Victor's side with a stare and gushing in Mari's ear, while Mari seemed intently focused upon where Plisetsky had seated himself a little further along with – to Yuuri's blatant surprise – Otabek Altin at his side.

But Yuuri barely noticed any of them, either. Not really.

He knew the professors ushered the students to their seats, but he barely saw them. He knew that a tune hummed on the edges of his hearing when chairs were scraped out and bodies plopped into seats, but he hadn't the attention to name what song it was. Dinner arrived, and Yuuri ate without even registering what he put in his mouth – and all because Victor sat at his side, looked at him, spoke to him, and Yuuri could hardly look away.

Maybe Minako was right. Maybe Yuuri really did need to watch himself. But that thought was distant and irrelevant, because Victor was _talking_ , and Yuuri didn't think he could possibly grow tired of listening to him.

"… he is saying that he has a problem with the, ah – pronunciation? _Da_ , but it is not so bad. It sounds almost the same, no?"

Yuuri spared a moment to peer around Victor's shoulder to the boy who sat at his side and to whom Victor gestured towards with a wave of his empty fork. The boy was blond, smiled with a captivating, languid smile, and had eyelashes so long Yuuri wondered if he'd maybe charmed them like that.

He shrugged. "I suppose, but if he doesn't like how people say his name then shouldn't people change it depending on what he does like?"

Victor pouted, an expression that Yuuri hadn't seen on him before that night but looked so practiced upon his lips that he was surprised he'd missed it. " _Yuu_ -ri," he said, drawing out Yuuri's name, "you are not supposed to be playing to his whims."

His words echoed Minako's, but the tone was so superficially petulant that Yuuri almost laughed for its dissimilarity. Instead, he only smiled. "Isn't it just polite?"

"Christophe sounds very similar though, does it not?"

"To Khristofór? Yes?"

"You do not sound very convinced to me."

Yuuri gave an emphatic shrug. "Maybe? Would you prefer it if I called you Vitya?"

How they had fallen upon the subject of names was the result of a series of steps that Yuuri hadn't the care to recall. Introductions and references to the confusion that Yuuri had felt over the 'two Durmstrang Victors' had somehow found them where they were. Yuuri couldn't recall half of the names Victor had provided him of his friends; Christophe was only memorable for being the topic at hand.

It was irrelevant. The discussion, the subject – all of it. It held no weight, and Yuuri had so many questions he wanted to ask Victor, so much he wanted to say and likely wouldn't be capable of pronouncing for the tripping of his tongue. And yet it seemed momentarily unimportant. Right then, with his half-finished dinner all but forgotten before him, Yuuri couldn't think of a single thing he'd rather be doing.

Except maybe throwing up his guts. The nervousness hadn't quite abated since they'd been seated.

 _Where are you from?_ Yuuri wanted to ask. _Where is your family from? Do you have brothers and sisters? How old are they? When's your birthday, what's your favourite subject at school, do you play Quidditch, what's your favourite colour…?_

Countless questions _could_ have been asked, and Yuuri sorely wanted to know the answers to them all. But nothing at that moment seemed quite as important as listening to Victor wax on about Christophe's indignation. He was almost sorry when it was interrupted by dessert's abrupt arrival, though Victor's abrupt delight swept such disappointment aside.

"Ah!" Victor exclaimed, clasping his hands together as the plate cleared before him to be replaced by another. Similar exclamations sounded around him. " _Vkusno!_ "

Yuuri started slightly at his cry but couldn't withhold the widening of his smile as Victor turned bright eyes towards him. He gestured at the dessert before him. "It is maybe a little bit uninspired, but it reminds me of as I was a child."

 _Nostalgic_? Yuuri wondered, glancing down at the dessert before Victor. It looked like nothing if not a chunk of white marshmallow atop a biscuit beneath a shiny drizzle of chocolate. "What is it?"

" _Ptichye moloko_ ," Victor said, hands raised before him and fingers drumming together expectantly. "You have had it before?"

"I don't think so. I don't even know what it is."

"It is…" Victor trailed off, paused, and frowned. "I am not being sure of the word, but –" He turned abruptly to Christophe at his side, tapped him on the shoulder and rattled a phrase in a language that Yuuri couldn't decide the nature of. Christophe was leaning around Victor a moment later with a friendly smile.

"It is Birds' Milk cake," he said slowly, enunciating the words with the same deliberation Victor used. "It is good. You should try it."

"Birds' Milk cake?" Yuuri said, drawing back into his seat slightly. "That sounds…" _Unappetising_.

Victor grinned widely and Christophe laughed. "It is better than it sounds, I think."

"Here!" Victor said brightly and overloudly. He seemed to do everything in such a way, and Yuuri almost jumped every time, yet he found he enjoyed seeing it. Victor so happy, so utterly delighted. He was an enchanting vision to behold. Ignoring his own plate, Yuuri watched as Victor plucked up his dessert fork and scooped a chunk of his cake – only to feel himself blush hotly as Victor held it out to him.

"W-what are you -?"

"You should try some. It is very much better than your one will be, I am certain."

Yuuri spared a glance for the cheesecake before him before turning back to Victor's offered fork. His stomach felt like it was trying to flip itself inside out. "It's fine, really. You can have yours."

"I would want to share it with you," Victor said.

"I'm sure it's really good, but –"

"You are not happy to try new things?" Victor frowned slightly, then shrugged the thought aside as he replaced it with a smile. "That is alright. I would not want you to be unhappy."

It wasn't that that Yuuri was reluctant for fear of the new. It wasn't that at all. It had, in fact, very little do with the dessert itself and everything to do with Victor's forwardness. Yuuri had been in a permanent state of dizziness since Victor had first clasped his hand and brought it to his lips that evening, and he had not the foggiest idea of how to climb out of his daze.

Now, that Victor was offering him part of his own dessert…?

Yuuri didn't think he had all that much of his Japanese heritage resounding in his behaviour, not like his parents did, but maybe his nervousness and mortified awkwardness at the prospect of what Victor offered was because of that. Maybe. Or maybe he was just a permanently nervous wreck at the thought of sharing a dessert like a real date.

But even through that nervousness, that unshakeable urge to hurl and the slight trembling that still quivered through his fingers, Yuuri didn't want to upset Victor. Not tonight. Not when he only knew so little of him but wanted to know so, so much more. He blurted out words before he could help himself.

"It's not that It's just that I wouldn't want to waste it if I didn't like it, and you seem so happy for it for some reason that I'm not really sure, because it kind of just looks like marshmallow and chocolate and has a bit of a concerning name –" Yuuri kicked himself mentally as his tongue continued away from him, "but it's not a bad thing! And I'm sure it tastes lovely, and I don't mean to offend your dessert of whatnot because everyone has different tastes, especially if it holds some kind of sentimental value for you, but I meant – I only thought that…"

Yuuri trailed off. He couldn't help himself, because Victor had turned towards him and was watching him with a different kind of smile playing across his lips. It was a smaller smile, a little softer, but it seemed to transform his whole face. He dropped his chin into a raised had, regarding Yuuri with a tilt of his head, and Yuuri felt himself blush for what must have been the hundredth time that night alone.

"Sorry," Yuuri mumbled. "I talk a lot when I'm nervous."

"Are you nervous?" Victor asked curiously.

"Very."

"It is cute."

"You keep saying that," Yuuri said, sinking slightly into his seat. He couldn't for the life of him determine if he was horrified or delighted that Victor thought of him in such a way.

"Because it is true," Victor said with a touch of a laugh. "I like it when you talk a lot."

"I'm pretty sure I make an idiot of myself."

" _Nyet_ , you do not. It is cute!" Then he held up his laden fork once more. "I'd be happy to share if it was with you."

Yuuri had nothing much to say to that. Just as he didn't say anything when Yuuko whispered something into his ears a minute later in the moment when Plisetsky apparently deemed something wholly necessary to call to Victor and briefly captured his attention. The taste of thick cream, of rich chocolate, settled on his tongue, and he abruptly decided he very much liked whatever the dessert was. Even better than that, because it was Victor who had given it to him.

Victor, who was even then turning back to him and sticking the fork that he'd offered to Yuuri into his mouth and smiling around a bite. "Good?" he asked.

Yuuri could only smile, and Victor beamed in reply. " _Mamochka_ – my mother, she used to make it for me when I was very little, so it is a very much loved treat. It reminds me of being a child, yes? _Mamochka_ , she was always telling me…"

The other diners at their table faded from importance as Yuuri listened to Victor speak. The Yule Ball, the music, the words Minako had demanded of him earlier… They were all brushed to the side, because this? Surely there could be little better than simply listening as Victor dove into a tale of his childhood and his parents. Nothing at all.

* * *

 _"But what of you? You are then from_ Yaponiya _?"_

 _"From – from Japan, you mean? No, no, but my mother and father are. I was born in England, but we visit every year to see their families."_

 _"How wonderful! I would love to visit to Japan! To see the blossoms,_ da _, in spring? The cherry blossoms? And the mountain, the… what is it called?"_

 _"Mount Fuji?"_

 _"_ Da _, that!"_

 _Yuuri couldn't help but smile. Victor had always seemed vibrant from afar, but it was entirely different speaking to him directly. He was animated, and bright, and though he tripped around his English a little bit, it was barely enough to disrupt their conversation. That he showed such excitement for Japan, Yuuri's home away from home, made it that much more wondrous to witness. It didn't even matter that he spoke like a sightseeing tourist._

 _"My mother's family owns an onsen," Yuuri said, "and we visit there every summer holidays, even though it's a little warm to make the most of it."_

 _"On-sen?"_

 _"Hot springs. Like a big bathhouse of sorts, with –"_

 _"Ah, yes! I would love to be seeing that. How wonderful!"_

 _Everything was wonderful in Victor's eyes, but more than that, his enthusiasm made it even better. Had Yuuri not already been smiling, he wouldn't have been able to help himself._

 _"What about you, though?" he asked in reply. "You're from Russia, right?"_

 _"Russia,_ da _, yes._ Sankt Peterburg _. It is far colder most of the time than it is here, but I like it. I enjoy the cold."_

 _"I'll bet, what with your Snow Charming."_

 _"Precisely! Cold is better, yes?"_

 _"Well, I've always thought so, but my friends seem to think I'm crazy for liking it so much."_

 _"Crazy?_ Nyet _, not at all! Cold is better. Definitely. We are the same in this believing, I think."_

 _And that was it. That touch of similarity, that likeminded opinion… If nothing else were to become of that night, Yuuri would be satisfied with simply that._


	7. Chapter 7 - A Dance

A/N: I'm terribly sorry for the incredibly long wait, my wonderful readers. Thank you for sticking by this story while I got my life back in order!

* * *

 **Chapter 7: A Dance**

How they ended up outside was something of a mystery. Or, more correctly, Yuuko and Phichit would both likely claim it was a mystery. Yuuri was rather quite satisfied with how it had eventuated.

The Weird Sisters, a band that Yuuri had never been particularly taken with, were remarkably adept at adapting their tunes to fit the Yuletide mood. What began as only the Triwizard Champions circling the dance floor that Dumbledore had cleared of tables with a flick of his wand rapidly flooded with more dancers than Yuuri could count.

Not that he tried. He was far more interested in Victor and his hand in Yuuri's.

Yuuri was a good dancer. He didn't think himself especially arrogant, and he knew he had worlds of space for improvement, but he'd been told by enough people, participated in enough competitions, and practiced for long enough that he could accept his was more than passable. For their first dance, however, Yuuri found himself all but tripping over his own feet for the first time in years.

"I'm sorry," he said, wincing as he nearly stepped on Victor's toes. "I didn't mean to."

"Didn't mean to what?" Victor asked, urging them into a slow turn that followed the mournful melody of the band.

"Step on your foot."

"Did you?"

"Nearly."

"I didn't notice."

Yuuri, chin tucked in a manner that would have had his old dance teacher clicking her tongue and demanding 'correct posture', peeked a glance up at Victor dubiously. "You're just being nice to me," he said.

Victor smiled, and Yuuri was dazzled all over again. How could a smile be so beautifully captivating? "I do not think so. I would tell you if you were doing badly. You are not."

They skirted around a couple dancing that twirled with less skill and more flapping of colourful dress robes before Yuuri replied. "It's still a little embarrassing."

"You are distracted?" Victor asked.

"You could say that."

"Why?"

 _By you, of course,_ Yuuri thought but didn't say. _And because it feels like I'm being watched, and I hate that, and it's embarrassing, and what if I make a fool of myself, and –_

He shrugged instead of speaking. Such a reply seemed far better suited than running his mouth.

Victor drew them to a pause as though he'd spoken in objection, however, and Yuuri couldn't help but stop alongside him. They were the only stagnant attendants in the pool of dancers, and though it felt a little strange, for once Yuuri didn't have much headspace left over to consider it. Not when Victor raised a hand to tip up his chin and all but drag Yuuri's gaze towards his own. It was both startling and embarrassing itself, and Yuuri's breath caught in a stutter.

"You are nervous," Victor said. "About the people, _da_? About everyone else?"

His eyes… very blue. And a little green. And oh-so intently focused upon Yuuri and only Yuuri that he couldn't have looked away had he wanted to. Yuuri was suddenly very sure that to do such a thing would be the worst kind of sin to commit.

"I…" was all he could manage, but Victor seemed to understand whatever it was he couldn't say anyway.

"Just look at me," he said, for once not smiling brightly and just short of bursting into merry laughter. He still smiled, but it was small, as intent as his gaze. "If they are making you nervous, then just look at me. Pretend that there is no one else."

It shouldn't have been as simple as that. Not at all. And yet somehow, as soon as Victor spoke, it was. He readjusted their hands, took a step to the side, and they were drifting in the dance once more like a boat easing down a wave. Yuuri felt himself sink into the flow of the music, into the steps, and his attention was wholly focused upon Victor.

It was a little embarrassing, but it was wonderful.

It was a little terrifying for its newness, but that was wonderful, too.

Yuuri's body found the steps, responding to the music, and as he felt his muscles ease and the comfort of familiar motions sweep over him with each extension. His mind was left to solely fixate upon Victor and to marvel at the fact that, while he'd requested Yuuri look only at him, Victor seemed to be attending to Yuuri just as much in return. That was the most wonderful part of all. Yuuri could barely hear the music for the fluttering hum of his heartbeat in his chest.

One song drifted into the next, the dancers continuing their swirling, flowing intricacies around them, when Victor's small smile finally widened into a grin once more. "See?" he said, cocking his head. "This is better?"

Yuuri blinked up at him as they took a gliding turn. "What?"

"You are very good at this, I see."

Warmth flooded Yuuri's cheeks and he head his chin. "I – ah, I don't…" He peered up at Victor briefly, at the surprising fondness all but radiating from him, and huffed out a nervous stutter of laughter. "Thank you."

Victor beamed, tightening their turn as they spun around someone that Yuuri barely even noticed, let alone recognised. "You are welcome. But can we be dancing a little further? You know basic steps, _da_?"

The basics? Yuuri would certainly like to think he did. He didn't say as much, however, and at Victor's direction, taking a step of direction himself, he thrust aside his lingering unease for watching eyes and followed Victor into the dance.

The Weird Sister's played. The Great Hall rung with music and Yuuri's thrumming heartbeat, and then, after a time, with talking and laughter and the shuffle of bodies as formality crumpled. Yuuri hardly noticed those around him but in passing glimpses quickly forgotten; Phichit ducking off the dance floor with a dark-haired girl in tow. Yuuko and Takashi paused briefly in a fit of laughter. Plisetsky and, still unexpectedly, Otabek drifted in dance across the floor and seemed to be actually talking civilly.

But they were glimpses and only that. Certainly not enough to distract Yuuri's attention from Victor, from their dancing, from the warmth of Victor's hand in his and the greater warmth of his unwavering smile. The butterflies wreaking havoc in Yuuri's stomach weren't gone, were _far_ from gone, but they were for a decidedly different reason this time.

Music sung. Dancers danced. Gradually, then all at once, Yuuri found himself spinning in his well. It felt good. Felt _great_ , even. Victor trilled a purely wondrous laugh in reply, chuckling something that Yuuri couldn't make out, but it didn't really matter. Simply the sound, the sight, the _feeling_ , was enough.

It became less scary. Less nerve-wracking, and enough that, when a particularly enthusiastic tune rippled through the air, Yuuri flipped their hands, took the lead, and directed Victor through fluid series of steps. He had to slow it slightly – Victor didn't appear know the particular steps, at least for this dance – but it was worth it when Victor let out another, louder tinkle of laughter following a trio of underarm turn that Yuuri spun him into without warning. It was a little awkward as Victor was distinctly taller than him, but entirely worth it.

"That is very –" Victor attempted, tottering slightly as they straightened, "very good!"

Yuuri grinned up at him. There wasn't fear. Not anymore. Not even when Victor adjusted their hands once more and, in a swinging lurch, threw them almost dizzyingly into another sequence. It was nigh impossible to withhold his own laughter at all.

When the song closed, Victor dropped Yuuri's hands to clap in open delight, like a child gifted a bonbon. He grinned at Yuuri, breathing a little heavily, and Yuuri didn't withhold his own in return. He didn't care so much that other couples flowed around them, some exiting the dance floor and others taking their places, while still more simply leant upon one another in the brief pause before the next song. They didn't matter at that moment. Not anymore.

"It is a lot of fun to be dancing with someone who knows how to dance!" Victor exclaimed, reaching for Yuuri's hand as soon as he'd unclasped his own from one another. "You _are_ good."

"Th-thank you," Yuuri said again. "And you. You let me do the turn and –"

"It was fun! I was not expecting it." Victor grazed his free hand through his hair in a way that somehow didn't leave it even slightly mussed. He puffed out a breath. "But would you care if we took a moment? It is getting a little hot, no?"

Yuuri immediately stammered his agreement and, hand still clasped in Victor's, allowed himself to be tugged from the dance floor and towards the wall-side table scattered with bowls of punch and empty cups. It was only when he was swirling the sweet juice in his mouth, the tangly favour tingling his tongue, that Yuuri even realised he was thirsty. How long had they been dancing for?

It was thickly crowded alongside the table and the bubble of conversation complimenting the music made it almost impossible to hold any kind of extended discussion. Victor tried, leaning towards Yuuri with a murmur and a point towards where Yuuri recognised Christophe dancing with the boy who'd been sitting at his side at dinner.

" – does not he?" Victor asked, Yuuri barely catching the tail end of his words.

"Sorry?" he asked, raising his voice.

"I said, he looks as though he is –" Victor's words were cut off again as the Weird Sisters broke out into a new and particularly loud song. Victor's abrupt silence suggested he too realised the futility of his attempt.

Yuuri opened his mouth, considered a reply, then shook the thought off as another arose. Dropping his cup upon the table, he reached for Victor's hand with more confidence than he'd ever managed off the dance floor. It said something that Victor took it immediately. He tugged him wordlessly from the hall without a backwards glance.

The Entrance Hall wasn't empty. Couples and clusters of students, Hogwarts and otherwise, spread throughout, lining the walls with some even slouched upon the steps. Yuuri hadn't realised it had been so long already that the retreat into casual lazing about be warranted. There was even a couple tucked alongside the doors and thoroughly embroiled in a manner of such dishevelment that they must have been all but smothering one another for some time already. There was already far more exposed skin that Yuuri thought someone like McGonagall would deem appropriate.

He turned back to Victor as the music from the hall muted just slightly. "Is this better?"

Victor glanced over his shoulder briefly before turning back to Yuuri. He beamed with that seemingly unshakeable smile, the same smile he'd worn almost the whole night, and it had lost none of its impact for how often Yuuri had seen it. "Perfect," he said. "It was quite crowded, yes?"

"Quite."

"And hot."

"Yeah, too many bodies all smooshed together."

Victor chuckled. "Good thing we are thinking upon the same, ah…"

"Wavelength?" Yuuri provided into his pause.

"Yes?" Victor said, cocking his head. "I think that is what you call it."

Yuuri nodded. He opened his mouth to reply when a gust of wind darted up behind him to stroke the back of his neck. Raising his hand absently to curl his fingers through the tendril of breeze, he spared a glance over his shoulder to where a pair of Beauxbatons students were disappearing through the doors. It was chilling outside, but not in a bad way – or at least not to Yuuri.

"Ah, that is a little better," Victor murmured.

Yuuri turned back towards him. "You're really that hot?"

Victor raised a shoulder. "It is warmer here than at Durmstrang."

"Surely not all the time."

"Not always, _nyet_ , but the cold is made the most of when it is arrived."

Yuuri pursed his lips. He glanced over his shoulder again towards the looming doors as they began to swing shut, then back to Victor. With a split-second decision the likes he usually wasn't comfortable with but felt was somehow natural at that moment, Yuuri reached for Victor's hand once more and drew him in the wake of the disappeared Beauxbatons students.

It said something that Victor didn't question him. It said even more that he didn't seem to need to. A knowing light brightened his eyes when Yuuri glanced over his shoulder towards him, and it was he as much as Yuuri that lead their dive into the cold and darkness beyond.

* * *

 _"I'm the surprising one? You're the one I that didn't expect to be able to dance."_

 _"_ Nyet _, it is not surprising of me. I have been dancing since I was very small, but everyone is always saying that it suits me, and that I seem like to be a person who would dance much."_

 _Yuuri glanced at Victor sidelong. If he were one to make such assumptions, then yes, he supposed he would consider that Victor seemed more likely to be the dancer out of the two of them. Far more. He had an easy grace, a long-legged elegance simply in the way he walked, that bespoke natural competency in such an artistic field._

 _Yuuri knew he was subdued. He knew that, because he was quiet, kept out of sight, and shrunk away from attention whenever the limelight was spun towards him, he might seem nothing if not the complete opposite. Still, the unexpected ease he found in Victor's company allowed some degree of teasing on his own part. Victor responded as vibrantly and loudly as ever._

 _"Well, I've been dancing since I was little, actually. With my friends – you met them at dinner, remember? Yuuko and Takashi? And Phichit, too."_

 _"Yes, I remember. You are very close to them?"_

 _"We've been friends forever."_

 _"It is good to have such close friends. I have been dancing for some time with several of my own, the same. With Christophe, we have been dancing for some time, and Georgi – well, he is not really with us, but he dances."_

 _"Ballroom dancing?"_

 _"A little bit of a lot of types."_

 _"But nothing in particular?"_

 _"Not really. But you do, Yuuri?"_

 _Yuuri paused for a moment, stuttering as Victor blinked at him expectantly. He wasn't sure if Victor calling him by name would ever not be somehow the most flustering and yet wonderful sounds he'd ever heard._

 _"I, ah… Yes. Yuuko and I have been partners in ballroom since we were kids. But I've been dancing ballet and contemporary since I was really little with Minako -"_

 _"Ballet? How wonderful! I would love to see it."_

 _"I – You… That would be really embarrassing…"_

 _"You would not show me?"_

 _"I could. It would just be embarrassing."_

 _"If I showed you mine, could be showing me yours?"_

 _"Yours? What do you -?"_

 _"I do practice dancing, da, but mostly for my – um, the word is…_ kataniye na kn'kakh _?"_

 _"I… sorry?"_

 _"To… on the ice, to be dancing like –"_

 _"To be -? Oh, skating? Ice-skating, like a few weeks ago, when –?"_

 _"_ Da _! Yes, ice-skating! Dancing helps with the ice-skating."_

 _"You skate? For fun, or…?"_

 _"Since I was a child. Very young, and practicing for competitions, though not so much in this year of school."_

 _"Your final year, right? I can imagine that's hard."_

 _"Not so hard. I am still_ kataniye _– still skate, yes, a lot. And Yuri does too, so –"_

 _"Yuuri?" Yuuri blinked, confused, and then even more so when Victor abruptly grinned with toothy delight._

 _"Ah, yes, you are having similar names. Yuri is Yuri Plisetsky. He is very short, and very loud, and he skates with me at times. For practice."_

 _"Really? Are you… close, then?"_

 _"He is very loud. And very… making of demands a lot of the time. He has asked me to help him build a routine."_

 _"That sounds… tough?" Yuuri couldn't say annoying, because he doubted it would be construed as appropriate, but he thought it nonetheless. It was better to smother the thought, however, right alongside the irrational jealousy that always seemed to arise whenever Plisetsky – or Yuri; what were the odds of them having the same name? – was involved._

 _"It can be, yes, as Yuri asks for a lot of attention at times, but it is still fun. I would like to skate some more this winter."_

 _"The Black Lake should be properly frozen now. You could maybe give it a go if you're careful."_

 _"The lake…"_

 _"What?"_

 _"Do you think that…?"_

 _"What?"_

 _A slow smile, a different smile, stretched across Victor's lips. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he grabbed Yuuri's hand and was tugging him after him as he set off through the snow in the direction of the slope with long strides. Yuuri barely had the time to be surprised._

 _"Victor?" he blurted out, his voice higher than he'd intended it to be. "Where are we going_

 _Victor's beaming smile flashed over his shoulder. "You wanted me to show you, Yuuri? Then I will show you, yes?"_

 _The thrill that passed through Yuuri all but vanquished the descending chill of the night that enveloped them as they seemed to flee from the echoes of the Yule Ball. He barely felt what little remained._

* * *

It was cold outside, but Yuuri liked it. He liked it even more knowing that he wasn't alone in his appreciation; maybe Durmstrang had it right, stationed up in Scandanavia or western Russia or wherever the unplottable school really was. Yuuri had always liked the winter, appreciated the winter winds, and knowing that there was a whole school that similarly appreciated it enough to wedge themselves into its icy depths was somehow comforting.

What was even better was that Victor liked it. He liked it a lot, and to Yuuri's eyes he came alive as they strode down the grounds in the depths of night. The wavering _Lumos_ charms on the ends of both of their wands were their only company.

Yuuri's breath puffed before him in white plumes, and the wind whisked it away. For once, however, he barely noticed at all. His attention was focused solely upon Victor ahead of him where he was dragging him towards the Black Lake, the back of his pale head as white as the snow itself. Despite the darkness, when Victor spared a glance and a wide smile over his shoulder again and again, Yuuri could make out the brightness of his expression. He thought he could almost feel it more than he could see it.

The further they drew from the school, from the echoes of the Weird Sisters and their music and the light that beamed like tangible warmth upon his skin, the further Yuuri seemed to withdraw from any lingering nervousness. The dancing had helped, but this was something else. In the darkness with Victor, their fingers hooked together and equally chilled, Yuuri didn't think he'd felt more comfortable in his life.

Strangely comfortable. And strangely happy.

"I am thinking I will be casting ice upon the lake again tonight," Victor said, half turning to glance over his shoulder once more. "Even if it is definitely colder."

Yuuri nodded his agreement. "It's probably iced past the tampering of the merpeople's magic, but…"

"Better to be safe?"

"Yes."

And that was it. Yuuri had revelled in the chance to speak with Victor even just a little bit, to learn the slightest pieces about him he could get his hands upon, but the silence disturbed only by their breathing was unexpectedly wonderful. It was as good as Victor's company itself. Almost as good as their clasped hands, even.

The clatter of rocked beneath his feet alerted Yuuri to their proximity to the lake more than his eyes did. His toes had grown a little numb, the his dress robes dampened by the snow up to his mid-calf, but he didn't care. He didn't hesitate or consider returning to the castle, just as he didn't hesitate when Victor stretched out his wandless hand before him and ice blossomed in a sweeping whirlwind across the lake. He nodded with a satisfied hum before turning back to Yuuri.

"You do know the Skating Charm?" Victor asked, turning on the edge of the lake and raising his _Lumos_ -laden wand between them.

Yuuri frowned. "Skating charm?"

" _Da_ , to make the skating."

"To make the…? Oh, you mean skates?" Victor's briefly troubled expression cleared as Yuuri explained. "Like the shoes? The skates?"

" _Da_ , yes, the skates."

"There's a charm for that?"

Victor laughed as though the thought of otherwise was nothing short of ridiculous. "Of course. There is a charm for everything, yes?"

Yuuri had to admit some agreement to that fact. "I suppose?"

"You do not sound very convincing," Victor said.

"I've never really considered it," Yuuri admitted. "We have skates that we can borrow from the school, so it's never needed."

"You would like me to be showing you?"

It wasn't really a question – or at least not to Yuuri. Charms were his forte, and he drank up Charm-lore like a dying man sculled water. How could he not want to know? He watched with rapt attention as Victor pointed his wond at Yuuri's feet. He murmured words beneath his breath – they sounded Latin, but with his accent it was difficult to be sure – and Yuuri couldn't help but exclaim in a moment of delight as his shoes abruptly propped themselves on conjured blades.

"That's fantastic!"

"I am happy you are liking them," Victor said with a laugh.

"They work just like skates?"

"Better, I am thinking. They do not get thin."

"Thin?" Yuuri frowned for a moment, then nodded his understanding. "You mean worn? They don't get worn out?"

" _Da_ , thin and worn." Victor waved his wand again, jumping slightly as the conjugation on the bottom of his own shoes rocked him on his feet. He offered a hand to Yuuri that Yuuri hadn't even the passing thought to disregard it. "We can skate?"

It took more than just that. Victor thickened the ice with a casual, easy sweep of his wand, a fact that Yuuri thought Minako and her overprotectiveness would have appreciated. Yuuri himself paved the surface, smoothing it with a simple charm. There was a moment of testing, another long stretch of caution, and then…

Yuuri enjoyed skating. It was as close to dancing as he could get outside of dancing itself, he thought, but in many ways it was wholly different. In some, even better. There was liberty on the ice, fluidity, and the act of moving with long, smooth lines wove grace and beauty the likes that the heavy trudging of walking on the ground or through snow couldn't never manage.

But on the ice, every glide of a practiced skater was graceful. The curve of a turn was languid and sweeping. Even the scrape and hiss of the conjured skates as they grazed across the surface were a kind of crisp, sharp music themselves. Yuuri was far from an expert in the sport, but he could manage. And to dance, to bring such movements onto the fluid grace of the ice… Coupled such with the merry, shrouding embrace of the wind that tugged him and urged his every turn, Yuuri didn't think he would rather be anywhere else. Definitely not when he paused in motion to watch Victor.

They held hands for a time, feeling out the lake and skimming across the greyness of ice that even the darkness of night couldn't wholly shadow, but after a few moments of spinning and turning, accommodating the wobbliness of dance-weary legs and cumbersome dress robes, they broke apart. Skating was simpler, freer, and better to be enjoyed in parallel than pinned by a holding hand, regardless of how much Yuuri might enjoy the feel of Victor's in his own.

Watching Victor, though – Yuuri knew he was competent at dancing, even if he didn't consider himself anything exceptional, but Victor was competent and then some on the ice. He grazed in a casual loop, leg sweeping and body leaning with the familiarity of long affiliation. The longer Yuuri watched, following his shadow and _Lumos_ -illuminated figure, the more he saw Victor become a part of the ice itself.

From what Yuuri had seen of him, Victor was always smiling. He was always bright and vibrant, glowing like a star shining its radiant light across hundred of thousands of light years. But stalling to a halt, watching Victor as he drifted in a circle and twisted in a piece of footwork that looked as complicated as some of Yuuri's dancing steps, he saw otherwise. Victor's expression wasn't solemn, but had grown nonetheless introspective. It glowed with a different light as he arced around in a _chass_ é, turning a twizzle before skating backwards for a beat and then arcing around in a loop once more.

It was glorious to watch. As Victor extended his arms, briefly closed his eyes and swept another _chassé,_ Yuuri was captivated all over again. He knew little enough of Victor as it was, but it felt as though was seeing a side of him he hadn't even thought possible.

Like his smiles. And his dancing, for that matter. Victor was more than the bubbly Durmstrang boy that Yuuri had seen from afar. He was more than the Snow Charmer with the puppy that he'd spied and longed for without even understanding his feelings, too. If nothing else, the motions of his skating bespoke that much.

"You are watching and not skating?"

Victor's words, spoken with his eyes closed once more, startled Yuuri out of his thoughts. "What?"

Victor slowed, drew towards Yuuri, and turned a slow arc around him. Yuuri followed him with his eyes, if only to catch a glimpse of the graceful motions once more. "Do you like it?"

"Watching you?" Yuuri asked before he could stop himself.

Victor's smile returned and he laughed. The echo rang off the ice beneath them. "That as well. I was meaning the skating."

Yuuri managed to shrug aside his embarrassment to reply. "I do. It feels like dancing."

"You dance a lot?"

"For ages. I love it, and ice-skating feels a little bit like it."

"I have always thought so," Victor said with a slow nod, finally drawing to a stop before Yuuri. "You do like to dance in twos?"

"As partners?" At Victor's nod, Yuuri shrugged. "I guess. Probably as much as I do solo."

"Would you try _kataniye na kn'kakh_ in twos, then?"

For whatever reason, Yuuri felt a slight thrill at Victors words. Something about the Russian itself, that he knew what it meant, had learnt it from Victor, and that those words meant something to Victor himself, made it special. He was agreeing almost without thought. "I think I would try just about anything."

" _Otlichno_!" Victor exclaimed, clapping his hands together in a momentary clasp. He looked once more like a delighted child, beaming down at Yuuri with his cheeks slightly reddened. "Then you should learn to skate with me, yes? We could be dancing the Kilian, then?"

Yuuri might not be all-knowing when it came to ice-skating, but he knew rudimentary terms. He shook his head almost frantically at mention of the classic routine. "No, no, I – I couldn't do that! Are you crazy?"

Victor laughed again. "Only mostly."

Yuuri shook his head as Victor abruptly began skating backwards seemingly without any effort at all. His vehemence died as he watched Victor swept into a sequence of steps, turned, twisted, built up speed, and sprung into a Salchow with perfect precision that seemed not at all impeded by his robes. It was breathtaking to watch, beautiful, and so wholly removed from what Yuuri considered of himself that his tongue was speaking the thoughts that had wracked him for days before he realised it. He couldn't help himself.

"Why would you choose me?"

Victor glanced over his shoulder towards Yuuri, catching his words even though Yuuri barely spoke above a murmur. "What did you say?" he said, cruising towards Yuuri.

Yuuri shook his head. He dropped his gaze to his shoes, kicking the toe-pick of the blade that Victor had given him. "I was only wondering, is all," he muttered.

"Wondering? What are you wondering?"

He gave another kick of his foot. "Why you would want to ask me to the Yule Ball when you could ask anyone? I'm sure every other student at Hogwarts would leap at the offer."

Victor didn't reply. Not immediately, anyway. He was silent for so long that Yuuri felt the bite of winter actually set its teeth in, slipping through the gaps in his robes upon the back of the wind and setting gooseflesh and trembles upon every one of his limbs. Or maybe it wasn't from the cold at all. Watching Victor was wonderful, but it made the reality of their situation all that much more apparent.

"Yuuri," Victor finally said, slow and deliberate.

There was something about his tone. About the way he spoke. About the word itself, and how it sounded somehow sombre. Yuuri couldn't help but glance up towards Victor, even if he couldn't quite bring himself to raise his chin.

Victor was staring at him silently barely a step away. Not the hint of a smile touched his lips, and his eyes were hooded and unblinking. He waited a beat after Yuuri met his gaze before reaching towards him and hooking a finger loosely into Yuuri's collar. "Why would you ask a thing such as this?"

Yuuri swallowed. Not nervousness but something else settled heavily in his gut. He'd been struggling to ignore that very question for days and hadn't fully managed even once. "Besides the obvious?" he asked.

"The obvious?"

"I mean, besides that fact that you're way out of my league and I wouldn't put it past you completely ignoring me in the first place? You could have asked anyone and they would definitely say yes."

"Out of your -?" Victor's frowning confusion lasted all of a moment before he seemed to riddle out the meaning of Yuuri's words. Then his expression became blank but for a thinning of his lips. "That is what you think."

"It's not so much thinking as knowing," Yuuri said, shoulders slumping and gaze lowering once more. Only to have Victor prop a finger under his chin and unexpectedly raise it himself, just as he'd done on the dancefloor.

Victor's eyes narrowed slightly when Yuuri met them. His face fell into something that Yuuri hadn't seen from him before, and he was still attempting to discern the meaning of the expression when Victor spoke. "You know, I saw you for the first time when I was alone at the forest. You were alone too, and you did not see me."

"I –" Yuuri began, but Victor continued over him.

"I saw you with your wind, did you know?" Victor tipped his head slightly, like a watchful bird keenly regarding its target. "You speak to it, yes? Much as I do with the snow."

"I…" Yuuri attempted once more, but trailed off himself this time rather than Victor interrupting him.

Victor paused for a beat before continuing. "After that, I would see you sometimes with your wind. When I would search outside for the snow, I would see you. At the school too, but you are quieter there. You do no smile so much." His lips thinned further, as though the thought was aggravating. "But with the wind, you are happy, and it is very beautiful to see. Did you know that?"

Yuuri thought he might have been blushing. Maybe. Possibly. He wasn't sure, and couldn't find it within himself to attempt to determine one way or another. His whole focus, gaze and otherwise, was consumed by Victor, holding him captive with his words and his unblinking stare.

"You don't…" he began, but his voice caught in his throat and he couldn't manage further.

"I like it when you are smiling," Victor said slowly, as deliberately as before. "And when your cheeks become red. And when you dance and seem very happy. I like to see you with your friends – it is Yuuko, _da_? She is the one who always pulls you to her table in the hall?"

Yuuri nodded mutely. Victor had noticed that? When? Just the thought of being watched, of being noticed, was almost too much for Yuuri to comprehend.

"I do not understand this 'league' quite so well," Victor continued. "And I for certain would not want to ask 'anyone'. Why would I, when I am liking you the most?"

The weight in Yuuri's throat, rapidly constricting, was so fierce that he almost couldn't breath. He stared up at Victor, utterly speechless, because what he'd said? It was entirely unimaginable. Inconceivable. That Victor actually liked Yuuri, but more than that, that he'd _noticed_ him before they'd even properly spoken, before he'd caught the Durmstrangs in a hastily-flung wind at the lake… It was surely impossible. Even with their momentary bumping into one another before that, the first time Yuuri had ever spoken to him, there should be no reason that Victor would remember him.

But he had. And he'd asked Yuuri to the Ball. Even with the days of that askance and the night they'd just spent together settling in, Yuuri couldn't quite believe it had actually happened.

"Thank you," he finally managed to choke out.

Victor's solemn expression faded slightly into confusion. "Why?"

"For asking me," Yuuri said. "I wanted to ask you for ages, probably even before I properly realised it, but I couldn't work up the courage. Thank you for asking me when I didn't ask you first."

The smile that crept across Victor's face seemed to make a mockery of his momentary solemnity. It stretched slow and wide, and the hand under Yuuri's chin that slid up to cup his cheek slightly felt somehow warm, despite the iciness of his fingers. "Then you are welcome. And I am happy. But perhaps you can make it up to me, yes?"

Yuuri frowned. "Make it up to you? What do you mean?"

"You can dance with me in _my_ kind of dancing," Victor said. Then he grasped Yuuri's hand and spun him into a turn so fast and unexpected that it was all Yuuri could do to keep his footing.

He wasn't an expert skater. Yuuri could dance, and he managed well enough at skating, but dancing on the ice? No, he couldn't do that. Even so, within moments the coldness of the snowy night and the murmurs of the wind echoed the laughter he couldn't suppress as Victor dragged him into his 'different kind of dancing'.

On the ice, away from the Yule Ball entirely, was surely the most wonderful place Yuuri had ever been.

* * *

 _The kiss happened at the end of the evening. Or maybe it was in the early morning, though it didn't matter which._

 _It wasn't long. It wasn't fiercely passionate. It was hardly more than a butterfly touch of Victor's lips upon Yuuri's cheek. And yet even that fluttering touch left him blushing and stuttering, all but melting with the certainty that yes, he very much did have something of a crush upon Victor Nikiforov._

 _Victor smiled. Then he laughed when Yuuri blushed further, and though it was teasing, it was of a good kind. When they parted ways for the evening, the weary murmur of students dragging themselves to their beds little more than a buzz through the hallways, Yuuri found himself less exhausted and more buzzing himself with an unshakeable wonder._

 _He could still feel Victor's lips upon his cheek, still hear his thickly accented words and the jovial melody of his laugh. He could still see the beauty of his skating, the snow drifting around him as though it fell just for him. Maybe it did._

 _Yuuri climbed into bed that night, burying his face in his pillows with the certain knowledge that he'd never liked anyone quite as much as he liked Victor._


	8. Chapter 8 - A Token

**Chapter 8: A Token**

How the rest of the year progressed should have been wondrous for Yuuri. It _should_ have been. But it wasn't – or at least not entirely.

Fifth year was a trial for students at Hogwarts. The OWLs were brutally rigorous, the build-up strenuous, and Yuuri was bogged down beneath more homework than he knew what to do with. Flitwick even went so far as to taper off some of his extension Charms work. He spent more hours holed up in the library than he ever had before – an impressive feat for a Ravenclaw and the studious characteristic that Yuuri couldn't really deny showed even in himself.

But it wasn't wholly the workload that had Yuuri laid up. It was more than that.

For reasons he couldn't at first understand, Yuuri abruptly became the 'friend' of more people than he could name. Many weren't even in his year, and it took nearly a week of ducking his head and dodging between classes, growing progressively more frazzled, before Kenjirou finally pointed out what should have been obvious to him.

"It's because you're dating that Durmstrang boy," Kenjirou said, seated cross-legged on the end of Yuuri's bed with arms folded and an impressive pout upon his face. "They all think that you'll put in a good word for them with the Durmstrangs." He huffed. "As though they're so interesting or something… I was the one that was friends with you _before_ all of that!"

Yuuri was rendered speechless by Kenjirou's announcement, and not only because he hadn't anticipated him to be jealous. It wasn't even his abrupt understanding that every other Hogwarts student was trying to use him as a stepladder to climb into the good books of the Durmstrang. It was more…

 _Dating. Are we dating?_

Yuuri was almost too afraid to ask. He didn't want to ruin what he had with Victor by doing so because he liked Victor. He liked him an awful lot.

The confusion surrounding his relationship status, something Yuuri had never even considered for himself before that Christmas, wasn't what burdened the rest of his year, however. If anything, Victor was a brightness that his ready smile and vibrant laughter never failed to radiate. That he spent every moment with Yuuri that he could, as though he truly wanted to be with him, was an unexpected wonder that Yuuri couldn't imagine being without.

They dined together in the Great Hall, as often at the Hufflepuff table as the Ravenclaw table, and even more often accompanied by Yuuri's and Victor's friends. Yuuri discovered Victor had an unshakeable sweet tooth, and it was wonderfully fun to taste-test every dessert with him.

They studied together in the library, sometimes with Phichit as he too crammed for his OWLs but oftentimes in isolated company. Victor was smart, Yuuri discovered, and despite his incessant good humour, the wealth of smiles, and his bemoaning of the 'horrible amount of work for a seventh year!' that he was forced to endure, he studied hard. Very hard. Sometimes, however, he would set aside his books to help Yuuri with a particularly confusing question he battled in silence. He always seemed to notice when Yuuri struggled, even when he didn't say anything.

Yuuri had never had such company before. Yuuko was a wiz at Defence magic, but her theory work often fell short. Takashi's head seemed impossibly crammed with History of Magic facts, but it wasn't something he was easily able to share but to provide those facts when directly asked. Phichit had generalised knowledge, was well-spread, and possessed a ready knack for picking up new content, but he wasn't particularly adept at teaching others. Neither was Minako, for that matter; she grew far too short with the pupils Flitwick had allotted her for her tutoring group. Yuuri had long ago learnt not to bother asking her for help.

But Victor was different. Sometimes he teased, and it took Yuuri some time to fully accept that such teasing wasn't even slightly malicious or condescending but simply an act of merriment. Sometimes Victor got distracted, seeming more intent upon riddling out the English text than the actual content of that text. And still other times he had such a different understanding of a concept, Durmstrang's curriculum teaching approaching in a such a different way, that Yuuri couldn't even begin to unravel it.

But other times… Still other times his help was remarkable.

"I've never been able to understand that before," Yuuri said one afternoon in which they studied, closeted in the depths of the library and far removed from the creeping spring weather outside. "Vanishing Spells have just never worked so well for me because I just haven't been able to quite accept that it just 'goes somewhere'."

"That is the trick of it," Victor said, twirling his quill between his fingers. "Not to think that it goes _away_ but that it is instead going _everywhere_."

It wasn't quite how McGonagall had described it – that 'something' was Transfigured into 'nothing' – but it made sense. Or at least it did to Yuuri. He shuffled forwards in his seat until he was nearly perched upon the edge and dunked his quill to set about continuing his essay upon a concept that had never quite grasped.

"Thank you," he said, flashing Victor a smile.

Victor smiled back immediately, just as he always did. "I am happy to help."

"Maybe I could help you with Self-Levitation Charms this afternoon in return?"

Victor's smile widened and brightened until he could have illuminated the entirety of the library himself. " _Otlichno_! That would very good! You are much better at the Levitation Charms than I am. I know this now."

Yuuri felt his cheeks warm, but it was with satisfaction as much as embarrassment. Victor was liberal with his compliments, though he stoutly insisted that they were all true and genuine. Yuuri's discomfort was slowly fading into delight with the persistent assault of kindness.

"It's just because of my Wind Whispering," he said matter-of-factly.

"It is still impressive," Victor replied, tapping his own cheek with the feathered end of his quill.

"Like your Snow Charming is impressive?"

" _Da_! Precisely like that!"

Yuuri had always liked studying, had always leant towards academic pursuits as much for the absence of a vast wealth of friends as because he truly enjoyed learning. But those hours in the library he grew to utterly love.

The instances when they took themselves to the lake in the days that it was still frozen, they spent hours ice-skating, with Victor insisting he practice and Yuuri readily agreeing to. The times times Yuuri wandered to the abandoned classroom the school dance teacher let him borrow, Victor trotted along behind him as often as Yuuko, Phichit, or Minako did. Lazy afternoons were spent in idle companionship when not buried in their study notes, and the handful of times Yuuri visited the Durmstrang ship it was with much to face chagrin and welcoming delight from the students and Victor's friends respectively.

Best of all, however, was when Yuuri wandered through the grounds and talked to the wind, or Victor spun through the snow when it still lingered in the winter months. Those moments were the best.

Yuuri loved it. He loved all of it. Even if he didn't know quite what they were to one another, because little kisses, and handholding, and murmured compliments weren't anything quite so definable as 'dating'.

Those were the good bits of Yuuri's fifth year. They made up for the peppering of attention from the Hogwarts students. They staved off some of the uneasiness from the frowning Durmstrangs who didn't seem to quite know what to make of Yuuri in Victor's company. They even helped with rebuffing Yuri Plesitsky's irritation, of which Yuuri was confronted by on frequent occasion.

"I think he hates me," Yuuri said one evening as Victor departed for the Durmstrang ship with Yuri in tow. Yuri cast a scowl over his shoulder before shoving his hands into his pockets and trotting after Victor as they disappeared through the Great Hall's doors.

Yuuri hadn't been speaking to anyone in particular, even with Minako and Mari sitting on either side of him, but he got a reply anyway. "Ah, that Plisetsky," Minako clicked her tongue. "He's a grouch."

"He's adorable," Mari said, and Yuuri couldn't help but turn slowly towards her. She sounded like she actually meant it. "What?"

Yuuri blinked. "Nothing, just… adorable?"

"Yes. He's like a little kitten." Mari smiled more readily than Yuuri could recall her doing for months. It was a little disconcerting to witness.

 _That kitten thing again,_ Yuuri thought with a shake of his head. Just the same as those girls had been weeks before. Personally, Yuuri didn't see it, but… maybe a puppy? The way he trailed after Victor, prodding his with questions about ice-skating as much as anything else, or so Victor had informed him, certainly resembled as much. Besides, Victor seemed to like puppies. Maybe that was it?

But Yuri – or 'Yurio', as Mari called him to 'avoid confusion' as she said – really did seem to dislike Yuuri. For a time, Yuuri couldn't discern exactly why. Because they were so different? Because he was a Hogwarts student and Victor was from Durmstrang? Because he saw Yuuri as stealing Victor away from him, and was jealous in much the same way that Yuuri had been of Yurio in turn?

"It is because Yurio likes you and does not know how to express it properly," Victor told Yuuri solemnly when Yuuri finally plucked up the courage to ask. Unfortunately, Yurio happened to be within their company at the time, slumped at the table in the library without a book in sight and seeming nothing if not intent upon disrupting them

" _Schtoh?_ " Yurio barked, what Yuuri's time with Victor had discovered meant a resounding 'what!'

Victor ignored him. "He is a troublesome child. I teach him when I can, but he is very, ah, how would you say… needy?"

Yurio, who knew significantly less English than Victor, spat something at him in Russian before kicking his feet up on the table before him. He glared at Yuuri. "I do not like you," he said, words short and sharp. "You are annoying."

Yuuri stared at him for a moment, curious. He didn't think Victor was necessarily right, but surely he couldn't dislike Yuuri so much if he withstood his company to hang around Victor.

"I see," Yuuri said, more to himself than anyone in particular.

"Do not let him bother you," Victor said, tapping a gentle knuckle to the side of Yuuri's head. "It would make him only annoy you more."

"Oi, Vitya," Yurio snapped. "Do not say –"

"Yurio is little, but he has a big temper."

"Do not call me that!" Yurio barked, slamming a heel down onto the table before rattling off another string of Russian.

Yuuri had to bite back a smile. Victor had picked up the use of Mari's 'Yurio' the moment he'd heard it, and Yurio seemed nothing if not disgruntled by that fact. He was infuriated, even, hissing and spitting in indignation every time it was voiced.

 _Maybe that's where the kitten reference arose from?_ he pondered. Yurio was certainly small enough for a barely thirteen-year-old.

It wasn't Yurio that was a problem in Yuuri's fifth year, however, or at least not a big one. He became even less so with his unexpected sort-of-friendship with fourth year Ravenclaw Otabek that seemed to appear from places Yuuri couldn't hadn't noticed and slip into their company. They made a somewhat motley crew, the four of them, seated in the library together with Yurio being the only one not actively studying. How Otabek even became a part of the study group Yuuri couldn't quite pinpoint. One day he was just there.

But Otabek wasn't a problem. Yurio wasn't a real problem. The Hogwarts students, the Durmstrang students, the excitement of the Triwizard Tournament drawing to a close, and the OWLs steadily creeping closer – none of that was the real problem. Not even that Victor would be leaving to return to his own school in rapidly dwindling time. That was the worst part, in Yuuri's opinion.

Or it was until the Third Task. Until Cedric Diggory appeared in the grounds outside the maze, white-faced and confirmed dead before the night was out. It was until Dumbledore announced at Harry Potter's word that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned.

Victor leaving was the worst thing in the world until Headmaster Karkaroff disappeared and was deemed a fleeing Death Eater, until Victor murmured words of an infestation at Durmstrang that was being flushed out immediately, and the Ministry of Magic all but imploded for the possibility of what it all meant.

Yuuri had a wonderful year – until the bad parts. After that, no matter how wonderful those months had been, it made the day of departure all that much worse.

* * *

Hogwarts was abuzz with activity as students hastened from breakfast in the Great Hall and made for their common rooms. The final day of term, manic as it always was with the fervour of teenagers who had left their packing until the last minute, was tripled with the mania from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons' students.

Yuuri wasn't a last-minute packer. It was for that reason more than any that he was already waiting in the Entrance Hall when Yuuko and Takashi arrived, hauling their trunks behind them.

"Do you think we've got everything?" Yuuko puffed, juggling more boxes, trunks, and cat carriers than she'd surely arrived with at the beginning of the school year. "I think that's it. I think that's everything."

"Anything you don't have we can survive without," Takashi said.

"Maybe _you_ could. What if it's a necessity?"

"Then we can always send an owl to Hogwarts for –"

"Takashi-kun, stop making so much sense and let me worry," Yuuko said, somehow managing to poke him with an indignant finger despite the juggling act she was performing. She turned to Yuuri a moment later and smiled. "All ready, Yuuri?"

Yuuri's attention had been distracted by the hubbub in the Entrance Hall. He raised a hand at Phichit who was saying his goodbyes to his Gryffindor friends. He caught a glimpse of Mari whispering something to one of her own friends, and of Minako clunking down the stairs with her wheeled trunk because she always denied the use of a Levitation Charm for carrying her luggage. He saw his dorm mates, Monty perched on the edge of his trunk like a bird squatting on a twig, and a handful of other Ravenclaws that he wouldn't hear from until next year spread in a loose flock.

Here and there, a Beauxbatons head was identifiable from their blue hat. A Durmstrang in their scarlet uniform, a deeper red than Gryffindor's colours, would flicker past before disappearing. Yuuri's gaze jumped between them all as many of them made to depart, trickling through the front doors of the castle that gaped wide open to admit the mellow, early summer air. He thought he caught sight of Yurio in frowning conversation with Otabek, and a pair of Victor's friends – Christophe's golden head was unmistakeable – but he couldn't be sure. What he really wanted, however, was…

"Yuuri?"

At Yuuko's nudge, Yuuri started and glanced towards her. She looked tired, as worn as most of the Hufflepuffs seemed to be since Diggory's death, and he immediately regretted his distraction. "Sorry," he said, holding out his hands towards her. "Would you like me to hold something for you?"

Yuuko immediately shook her head, offering him a tired little smile. "No, it's fine. Thank you, but – have you been waiting here for long?"

Yuuri shrugged. Since breakfast he'd been idling in the Entrance Hall, watching as it gradually filled with students that would within the hour be streaming down the hill towards the horseless carts and then to Hogsmeade Station. But Yuuko didn't need to know that. She could be demanding at times, but she hated to think that others would be waylaid by her lateness.

Yuuko seemed to hear his unspoken words, however, the words that he didn't really let himself even think. "Have you said goodbye to everyone?" she asked with a pointed rise of her eyebrows.

"Mostly," Yuuri said vaguely. "There's not a whole lot of people I need to say goodbye to."

"I can think of one in particular," Yuuko said before she tipping her head in a gesture over Yuuri's shoulder.

Yuuri was immediately turning, all but lurching in Victor's direction even before he'd caught sight of him. His friends had once been stoically reluctant to allow Victor any leeway, but then…

Mari didn't much care so long when Yuuri claimed he wasn't _really_ scared of the Durmstrangs. Takashi had fallen into a history discussion with Victor that seemed to override language barriers. Yuuko had crumpled the first time she'd seen him skate, whispering an awed "He seems so different when he's on the ice, doesn't he?" Yuuri could only agree with her observation. She was right, after all.

Minako had been a tougher nut to crack, but even she had bent her back a little when time seemed to impress upon her just how much Yuuri liked Victor. She'd made something of an challenge of her acceptance, planting herself between Yuuri and Victor barely a month before the end of term with her hands propped on her hips. She'd pinned Victor with a stare that could have frozen the height of summer.

"I'll allow it," she'd said, as though she had any real say in the matter. She'd snapped a raised finger up between them, almost jabbing Victor in his face. "But the second I hear you've hurt him in any way, you'll have _me_ to deal with."

Victor had appeared momentarily stunned by Minako's announcement, almost cross-eyed as he regarded her waving finger. But then his stupor had melted into a broad smile that had Minako faltering.

"Wonderful! It is so good that Yuuri has people who care for him so much. It makes me very happy; he is very special!"

And just like that, Minako melted too. Or she melted as much as she ever did. Victor, it seemed, had a way of making people like him. Yuuri certainly understood that well enough.

In the Entrance Hall, at Yuuko's unspoken permission, Yuuri abandoned his trunk and dove into the sea of students, making for where Victor stood just inside the doorway. All of him was familiar now – the flop of his silver-grey fringe, the glowing shine of his bright eyes, his ready smile and the easy grace with which he stood – but Yuuri still felt himself lighten at the sight of him. Strange, how just a passing glimpse could leave Yuuri so utterly happy.

Victor seemed to feel him approaching even half-turned away as he was. Spinning in place, he was beaming in welcome before Yuuri had made it halfway across the hall towards him. His hand latched onto Yuuri's as soon as he could reach and, without a word, they were making their way through the front doors and from the Entrance Hall.

It went without saying to go away. To seek relative privacy. More than that, Yuuri had noticed that Victor always seemed to wish him goodnight at the same spot at the edge of the courtyard, just before the first hint of decline leading down the hill. That spot was incessantly buffeted by glorious wind, and Yuuri revelled in those moments, even as he regretted them. It had only taken a simple question to discern the reason for Victor's decision.

"You like it where it is the most windy, yes? Of course I would find the best spot in the grounds."

Just that. Only that. Yuuri abruptly realised that Victor really did like him. He did notice him. And, in return, Yuuri always whispered to the winds to draw forth the coldest chills, even as summer chased the crispness away. Victor didn't say he knew what he was doing, but his smile always spoke for him.

The murmur of student voices, those departing the castle and those still within, were all but vanquished at the modest distance that Yuuri and Victor stopped at. Yuuri clung to Victor's hand, staring at their interlaced fingers, and couldn't help but long for the moment to last forever. Even just a little bit longer than that final day would be nice. The school year had ended horribly, cruelly, and the Wizarding World was sure to change if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named really was back.

But Yuuri wasn't thinking about that. He wasn't thinking of some reincarnated Dark Lord, or Cedric Diggory and the horrifying sight of his parents wailing in mourning. For that moment, Yuuri was alone with Victor, and he wanted it to last forever.

Which it wouldn't. Yuuri hated that.

"You will write to me?" Victor finally asked, speaking into their mutual silence. His voice was a murmur, with none of its usual joviality, and Yuuri felt his chest tighten for it.

He nodded. "I will," he said, twisting Victor's fingers in his grasp. "And you too."

"Every day if I can. And perhaps I can even acquire one of those Muggle telephones, yes? You said that your family has one."

Yuuri smiled slightly. Victor's English had improved in leaps and bounds over the past months. He took to languages like a swan to water, jumping between Russian, English, and an admirable wealth of French, too. That he'd even recalled the English word for a Muggle telephone that Yuuri had only mentioned once…

Well, Victor would likely claim it was because he deemed that particular word important if Yuuri asked him. He'd said just as much when Yuuri had asked similarly beforehand about words like 'boyfriend', a status that he'd definitively clarified only a week ago.

Yuuri regretted that he'd only actually fully realised they even _were_ boyfriends with that clarification. He'd wasted so much time teetering in mental limbo at the thought of it.

"You only have to call if you want to," Yuuri murmured. He didn't bother to try to keep the touch of desperation from his voice.

Victor squeezed his hand insistently enough that Yuuri couldn't help but raise his gaze. Victor smiled gently. "I will. And I will then be able to keep you better updated on what is happening at my school."

Yuuri nodded in firm agreement. "Please do. It scares me a little that you're going back to Durmstrang after everything that happened with your old headmaster."

With a scrunch of his nose, Victor shook his head. "If anything, I think that Karkaroff's disappearance has been a good thing. The school has been, as you would say it, 'gutted' for these supposed Death Eaters."

"Good," Yuuri said fiercely. He clutched Victor's hand tightly in return. "I don't care what happens to any of them, so long as it's safe for you."

Victor chuckled quietly. "Worrywart," he said, using the word that Mari had – frustratingly – let slip to him months before. "I will be alright."

"Please be."

"I will call you and write you."

"Okay."

"And you will do the same for me?"

Yuuri knew he wouldn't be able to reply with proper words, his throat tightening and stoppering, so he didn't try. He nodded rapidly instead. More difficulty would be found in limiting such calls and letters to only once a day. Had it really been months that he'd spent in Victor's company? It felt far shorter. Not long enough by half.

"Maybe," Victor continued slowly, "I could even come to visit you? You said that your family travels to Japan every summer holiday, yes?"

Yuuri nodded and Victor smiled widely. "I have wanted to visit this 'on-sen' since you mentioned it the first time, you know."

The idea caught in Yuuri's mind and held. Victor, visiting his house, or even better coming to _Japan_ … The thought was almost too perfect to consider. "I would love you to," he blurted out before he even realised his voice had returned to him. "And _okaa-san_ and _otou-san_ will be more than happy to have you come. Mari said she might not even be visiting with us this year, so there should be an extra spot, and it's a long holiday but that makes it all the more worthwhile, and I don't know if you would be able to come for the whole time, but – but –"

Yuuri stifled himself before he could descend into pleading, but Victor seemed to it nonetheless. He raised Yuuri's fingers to his lips, pressing a kiss upon his knuckles as he so often did. "I would love to," he said simply.

"And…" Yuuri caught his bottom lip between his teeth. "Maybe I could visit you too?"

Victor's gaze snapped towards him, eyebrows rising. His smile flared in his eyes even more than upon his lips. "That would be wonderful. Although, it will be quite cold still –"

"I don't mind," Yuuri said. "I like the cold."

"It is quite far, too."

"I don't care. Portkeys are easy enough to travel by."

Victor's eyes shone. "Then I would love for you to visit me. Or better yet – maybe you should just transfer directly to Durmstrang? That would be the most wonderful, surely."

Yuuri laughed alongside Victor as he chuckled, even if a touch of longing and a silent _Could I?_ murmured in the back of his head. "Maybe when it's totally cleared of Death Eaters. Minako likely wouldn't allow it, otherwise."

"Yes, well, Minako is the one to convince," Victor said.

"Yeah, don't we know it."

"She has made it apparent to me, yes."

For a moment, they stood in silence. The brief spark of good humour between them dwindled slowly, but die it eventually did. Yuuri felt his smile fade from his lips as it left him. "I'm going to miss you," he said quietly, and he'd never felt less embarrassed for a confession in his life.

"Me too," Victor murmured. "But until I visit you, or you visit me, I have a gift for you."

Still clutching Yuuri's fingers with one hand, Victor dove into his pocket with the other. Yuuri frowned. "A gift? I didn't get you anything, though."

"It is not that kind of a gift," Victor said, brushing his words aside. "It is something I have made."

"Something you made?"

"Yes." Victor winked. "And that is why it is a special kind of gift."

The little woven bag he drew forth from the tangle of his coat pocket was simple and unadorned, which was strange enough in itself. Yuuri knew Victor was partial to pretty things, a confusing realisation he'd struggled with when they'd first begun dating given that Victor was dating _him_. But what he pulled from that bag, all without releasing Yuuri's hand, was anything but plain.

It was simple still. Equally unadorned. But it wasn't anywhere near plain, and Yuuri was captivated from the moment Victor held up the ring before him. It looked as though it had been carved from glass. Glass, or –

"It was from the winter just past," Victor said lowering it to Yuuri's hand. "A Stasis Charm would keep any ice frozen, but that naturally formed from winter holds better. Will you wear it, at least until I can visit?"

There was no question in the matter, and Victor likely knew that, because he didn't wait for Yuuri to nod in instant agreement. The ice-crafted ring slid onto his finger, cool to the touch but not painfully cold. As it settled, Yuuri felt that familiar, painful weight tighten around his throat again. His eyes burned slightly, his vision momentarily blurring as he peered down at the ring.

"I… haven't got one for you," he managed, his voice choked.

"I do not need one," Victor said, wrapping both of his hands around Yuuri's and spreading his fingers to leave the ring exposed.

"Still," Yuuri said, twisting his captured hands, "I would like to, so…"

He'd never done it before, but that didn't matter. The wind responded to Yuuri's calls, his requests and gentle pleas, because he rarely asked for anything of it. With a beckon of the cool winds that trickled around him, Yuuri coaxed a handful into his palm.

 _\- help, to help, to -_

 _\- fix? Broken? Bind together -_

 _\- weaving, winding, braiding -_

The wind plucked Yuuri's request from his lips before he could ask it. With a nudge, he uttered in silent behest: _Can you just… stay with him? For a little while?_

Those who didn't speak to the wind didn't believe in its sentience. Those who couldn't speak to snow and ice like Victor likely didn't either. But Yuuri knew better, and Victor clearly did too as he smiled down at the band of invisible wind that circled his finger, mirroring that on Yuuri's hand.

"I like it," he murmured. "Even if I cannot see it, I can feel it. It is almost like you are holding my hand."

"Just until I can hold it properly again," Yuuri said, raising his gaze to meet Victor's.

"Not for long."

"No, not for long. I promise."

It had been a horrible end to a wonderful, confusing, and a more than a little bit perfect year. Though the weight of the future and what was to come hung over their heads, the moment that Yuuri reached for Victor and drew him into a kiss was the moment that captured it all. That moment made parting it just a little bit okay.

* * *

A/N: This is the end! It actually is, though I had considered for a time writing a sequel. I'm not sure if that's going to happen, but it was definitely a consideration, so... yeah, I hope that explains if it seems a little abrupt.

Anyway, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this story, and I'd love to hear from you to know your thoughts. Any and every review left is absolutely appreciated!


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